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THE AFTER-SCHOOL SERIES. 



CLASSIC FRENCH COURSE 
IN ENGLISH. 



WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON. 






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NEW YORK : 
CHAUTAUQUA PRESS, 

C. L. S. C. DEPARTMENT, 

805 Broadway. 

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Copyright, 1886, 
By WILLIAM CLEAVER WILKINSON. 



Other Volumes in the After-School Series 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



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The required books of the C. L. S. C. are recommended by a Council 
of six. It must, however, be understood that recommendation does not 
involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every 
principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended. 



ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED 

BY RAND, AVERY. & COMPANY, 
BOSTON. 



PEEFAOE. 



The preparation of the present volume proposed 
to the author a task more difficult far than that un- 
dertaken in auy one of the four preceding volumes 
of the group, The After-School Series, to which 
it belongs. Those volumes dealt with literatures 
limited and finished : this volume deals with a litera- 
ture indefinitely vast in extent, and still in vital 
process of growth. The selection of material to be 
used was, in the case of the earlier volumes, virtu- 
ally made for the author beforehand, in a manner 
greatly to ease his sense of responsibility for the 
exercise of individual judgment and taste. Long 
prescription, joined to the winnowing effect of wear 
and waste through time and chance, had left little 
doubt what works of what writers, Greek and 
Roman, best deserved now to be shown to the gen- 
eral reader. Besides this, the prevalent custom of 



iv Preface. 

the schools of classical learning could then wisely 
be taken as a clew of guidance to be implicitly fol- 
lowed, whatever might be the path through which it 
should lead. There is here no similar avoidance of 
responsibility possible ; for the schools have not 
established a custom, and French literature is a liv- 
ing body, from which no important members have 
ever yet been rent by the ravages of time. 

The greater difficulty seen thus to inhere already 
in the nature itself of the task proposed for accom- 
plishment, was gravely increased by the much more 
severe compression deemed to be in the present in- 
stance desirable. The room placed at the author's 
disposal for a display of French literature was less 
than half the room allowed him for the display of 
either the Greek or the Latin. 

The plan, therefore, of this volume, imposed the 
necessity of establishing from the outset certain 
limits, to be very strictly observed. First, it was 
resolved to restrict the attention bestowed upon the 
national history, the national geography, and the 
national language, of the French, to such brief 
occasional notices as, in the course of the volume, 
it might seem necessary, for illustration of the par- 
ticular author, from time to time to make. The 



Preface. v 

only introductory general matter here to be found 
will accordingly consist of a rapid and summary 
review of that literature, as a whole, which is the 
subject of the book. It was next determined to 
limit the authors selected for representation to 
those of the finished centuries. A third decision 
was to make the number of authors small rather 
than large, choice rather than inclusive. The prin- 
ciple at this point adopted, was to choose those 
authors only whose merit, or whose fame, or whose 
influence, might be supposed unquestionably such 
that their names and their works would certainly be 
found surviving, though the language in which they 
wrote should, like its parent Latin, have perished 
from the tongues of men. The proportion of space 
severally allotted to the different authors was to be 
measured partly according to their relative impor- 
tance, and partly according to their estimated rela- 
tive capacity of interesting in translation the average 
intelligent reader of to-day. 

In one word, the single inspiring aim of the author 
has here been to furnish enlightened readers, versed 
only in the English language, the means of acquir- 
ing, through the medium of their vernacular, some 
proportioned, trustworthy, and effective knowledge 



vi Preface. 

and appreciation, in its chief classics, of the great 
literature which has been written in French. This 
object has been sought, not through narrative and 
description, making books and authors the subject, 
but through the literature itself, in specimen ex- 
tracts illuminated by the necessary explanation and 
criticism. 

It is proposed to follow the present volume with a 
volume similar in general character, devoted to 
German literature. 



CONTENTS. 



I. PAGE 

Fkench Literature 1 

II. 
Froissart 18 

III. 
Rabelais 28 

IV. 
Montaigne 44 

V. 

La Rochefoucauld (La Bruyere; Vauve- 
nargues) 6Q 

VI. 
La Fontaine 81 

VII. 

MOLIERE 92 

VIII. 
Pascal 115 

vii 



viii Contents. 

IX. PAGE 

Madame de Sevigne* 134 

X. 

CORNEILLE 151 

XL 
Kacine .166 

XII. 
Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Massillon 182 

XIII. 
Fenelon 205 

XIV. 
Montesquieu 225 

XV. 
Voltaire • • • 238 

XVI. 
Kousseau •. 255 

XVII. 
The Encyclopaedists 282 

XVIII. 
Epilogue 288 

Index 293 



Classic French Course in English. 



FRENCH LITERATURE. 

Of French literature, taken as a whole, it may 
boldly be said that it is, not the wisest, not the 
weightiest, not certainly the purest and loftiest, but 
by odds the most brilliant and the most interesting, 
literature in the world. Strong at many points, at 
some points triumphantly strong, it is conspicuously 
weak at only one point, — the important point of 
poetry. In eloquence, in philosophy, even* in the- 
ology ; in history, in fiction, in criticism, in episto- 
lary writing, in what may be called the pamphlet ; 
in another species of composition, characteristically, 
peculiarly, almost uniquely, French, — the Thought 
and the Maxim ; by eminence in comedy, and in all 
those related modes of written expression for which 
there is scarcely any name but a French name, — 
the jeu cV esprit, the bon mot, persiflage, the phrase; 
in social and political speculation ; last, but not 
least, in scientific exposition elegant enough in 
form and in style to rise to the rank of literature 

1 



2 Classic French Course in English. 

proper, — the French language has abundant achieve- 
ment to show, that puts it, upon the whole, hardly 
second in wealth of letters to any other language 
whatever, either ancient or modern. 

What constitutes the charm — partly a perilous 
charm — of French literature is, before all else, its 
incomparable clearness, its precision, its neatness, 
its point ; then, added to this, its lightness of touch, 
its sureness of aim ; its vivacity, sparkle, life ; its 
inexhaustible gayety ; its impulsion toward wit, — 
impulsion so strong as often to land it in mockery ; 
the sense of release that it breathes and inspires ; 
its freedom from prick to the conscience ; its exqui- 
site study and choice of effect ; its deference paid to 
decorum, — decorum, we mean, in taste, as distin- 
guished from morals ; its infinite patience and labor 
of art, achieving the perfection of grace and of 
ease, — in one word, its style. 

We speak, of course, broadly and in the gross. 
There are plenty of French authors to whom some 
of the traits just named eould by no means be 
attributed, and there is certainly not a single French 
author to whom one could truthfully attribute them 
all. Voltaire insisted that what was not clear was 
not French, — so much, to the conception of this 
typical Frenchman, was clearness the genius of the 
national speech. Still, Montaigne, for example, 
was sometimes obscure ; and even the tragedist 
Corneille wrote here and there what his commen- 
tator, Voltaire, declared to be hardly intelligible. 



French Literature. 3 

So, too, Rabelais, coarsest of humorists, offending 
decorum in various ways, offended it most of all ex- 
actly in that article of taste, as distinguished from 
morals, which, with first-rate French authors in gen- 
eral, is so capital a point of regard. On the other 
hand, Pascal, — not to mention the moralists by 
profession, such as Nicole, and the preachers Bour- 
daloue and Massillon, — Pascal, quivering himself, 
like a soul unclad, with sense of responsibilit} 7 to 
God, constantly probes you, reading him, to the in- 
most quick of your conscience. Rousseau, notably 
in the " Confessions," and in the Reveries supple- 
mentary to the 4t Confessions ; " Chateaubriand, echo- 
ing Rousseau ; and that wayward woman of genius, 
George Sand, disciple she to both, — were so far from 
being always light-heartedly gay, that not seldom 
they spread over their page a sombre atmosphere 
almost of gloom, — gloom flushed pensively, as with 
a clouded " setting sun's pathetic light." In short, 
when you speak of particular authors, and naturally 
still more when you speak of particular works, 
there are many discriminations to be made. Such 
exceptions, however, being duly allowed, the lite- 
rary product of the French mind, considered in the 
aggregate, will not be misconceived if regarded as 
possessing the general characteristics in style that 
we have now sought briefly to indicate. 

French literature, we have hinted, is compara- 
tively poor in poetry. This is due in part, no doubt, 
to the genius of the people ; but it is also due in 



4 Classic French Course in English. 

part to the structure of the language. The lan- 
guage, which is derived chiefly from Latin, is thence 
in such a way derived as to have lost the regularity 
and stateliness of its ancient original, without hav- 
ing compensated itself with any richness and sweet- 
ness of sound peculiarly its own ; like, for instance, 
that canorous vowel quality of its sister derivative, 
the Italian. The French language, in short, is far 
from being an ideal language for the poet. 

In spite, however, of this fact, disputed by no- 
body, it is true of French literature, as it is true of 
almost any national literature, that it took its rise 
in verse instead of in prose. Anciently, there were 
two languages subsisting together in France, which 
came to be distinguished from each other in name 
by the word of affirmation — oc or oil, yes — sever- 
ally peculiar to them, and thus to be known respec- 
tively as langne d'oc, and langue oVo'il. The future 
belonged to the latter of the two forms of speech, — 
the one spoken in the northern part of the country. 
This, the langue oVoil, became at length the French 
language. But the langue d'oc, a soft and musical 
tongue, survived long enough to become the vehicle 
of lyric strains, mostly on subjects of love and gal- 
lantry, still familiar in mention, and famous as the 
songs of the troubadours. The flourishing time of 
the troubadours was in the eleventh and twelfth cen- 
turies. Provencal is an alternative name of the 
language. 

Side by side with the southern troubadours, or a 



French Literature. 5 

little later than they, the trouv&res of the north sang, 
with more manly ambition, of national themes, and, 
like Virgil, of arms and of heroes. Some produc- 
tions of the trouveres may fairly be allowed an ele- 
vation of aim and of treatment entitling them to be 
called epic in character. Chansons de geste (songs 
of exploit), or romans. is the native name by which 
those primitive French poems are known. They 
exist in three principal cycles, or groups, of produc- 
tions, — one cycle composed of those pertaining to 
Charlemagne ; one. of those pertaining to British 
Arthur ; and a third, of those pertaining to ancient 
Greece and Rome, notably to Alexander the Great. 
The cycle revolving around the majestic legend of 
Charlemagne for its centre was Teutonic, rather 
than Celtic, in spirit as well as in theme. It tended 
to the religious in tone. The Arthurian cycle was 
properly Celtic. It dealt more with adventures of 
love. The Alexandrian cycle, so named from one 
principal theme celebrated, — namely, the deeds of 
Alexander the Great, — mixed fantastically the tra- 
ditions of ancient Greece and Rome with the then 
prevailing ideas of chivalry, and with the figments 
of fairy lore. (The metrical form employed in these 
poems gave its name to the Alexandrine line later 
so predominant in French poetry.) The volume of 
this quasi-epical verse, existing in its three groups, 
or cycles, is immense. So is that of the satire and 
the allegory in metre that followed. From this 
latter store of stock and example, Chaucer drew to 



6 Classic French Course in English. 

supply his muse with material. The fabliaux, so 
called, — fables, that is, or stories, — were still 
another form of early French literature in verse. It 
is only now, within the current decade of years, that 
a really ample collection of fabliaux — hitherto, with 
the exception of a few printed volumes of specimens, 
extant exclusively in manuscript — has been put into 
course of publication. Rutebeuf , a trouv&re of the 
reign of St. Louis (Louis IX., thirteenth century), 
is perhaps as conspicuous a personal name as any 
that thus far emerges out of the sea of practically 
anonymous early French authorship. A frankly sor- 
did and mercenary singer, Rutebeuf, always tending 
to mockery, was not seldom licentious, — in both 
these respects anticipating, as probably also to some 
extent by example conforming, the subsequent lite- 
rary spirit of his nation. The fabliaux generally 
mingled with their narrative interest that spice of 
raillery and satire constantly so dear to the French 
literary appetite. Thibaud was, in a double sense, 
a royal singer of songs ; for he reigned over Na- 
varre, as well as chanted sweetly in verse his love 
and longing, so the disputed legend asserts, for 
Queen Blanche of Castile. Thibaud bears the his- 
toric title of The Song-maker. He has been styled 
the Beranger of the thirteenth century. To Thibaud 
is said to be due the introduction of the feminine 
rhyme into French poetry, — a metrical variation of 
capital importance. The songs of Abelard, in the 
century preceding Thibaud, won a wide popularity. 



French Literature. 7 

Prose, meantime, had been making noteworthy 
approaches to form. Villehardotiin must be named 
as first in time among French writers of history. 
His work is entitled, " Conquest of Constantinople." 
It gives an account of the Fourth Crusade. Join- 
ville, a generation later, continues the succession of 
chronicles with his admiring story of the life of 
Saint Louis, whose personal friend he was. But 
Froissart of the fourteenth century, and Comines 
of the fifteenth, are greater names. Froissart, by 
his simplicity and his narrative art, was the Herodo- 
tus, as Philip de Comines, for his political sagacity, 
has been styled the Tacitus, of French historical 
literature. Up to the time of Froissart, the litera- 
ture which we have been treating as French was 
different enough in form from the French of to-day 
to require what might be called translation in order 
to become generally intelligible to the living genera- 
tion of Frenchmen. The text of Froissart is pretty 
archaic, but it definitely bears the aspect of French. 

With the name of Comines, who wrote of Louis 
XI. (compare Walter Scott's " Quentin Durward "), 
we reach the fifteenth century, and are close upon 
the great revival of learning which accompanied the 
religious reformation under Luther and his peers. 
Now come Rabelais, boldly declared by Coleridge 
one of the great creative minds of literature ; and 
Montaigne, with those Essays of his. still living, and, 
indeed, certain always to live. John Calvin, mean- 
time, writes his c 4 Institutes of the Christian Religion ' ' 



8 Classic French Course in English. 

in French as well as in Latin, showing once and for 
all, that in the right hands his vernacular tongue was 
as capable of gravity as many a writer before him 
had superfluously shown that it was capable of levity. 
Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, is a French writer 
of power, without whom the far greater Montaigne 
could hardly have been. The influence of Amyot 
on French literary history is wider in reach and 
longer in duration than we thus indicate ; but Mon- 
taigne's indebtedness to him is alone enough. to 
prove that a mere translator had in this man made 
a very important contribution to the forming prose 
literature of France. 

u The Pleiades," so called, were a group of seven 
writers, who, about the middle of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, banded themselves together in France, with the 
express aim of supplying influential example to im- 
prove the French language for literary purposes. 
Their peculiar appellation, " The Pleiades," was 
copied from that of a somewhat similar group of 
Greek writers, that existed in the time of Ptolemy 
Philadelphia. Of course, the implied allusion in it 
is to the constellation of the Pleiades. The individual 
name by which the Pleiades of the sixteenth century 
may best be remembered is that of Ronsard the poet, 
associated with the romantic and pathetic memory 
of Mary, Queen of Scots. Never, perhaps, in the 
history of letters was the fame of a poet in the poet's 
own lifetime more universal and more splendid than 
was the fame of Ronsard. A high court of literary 



French Literature. 9 

judicature formally decreed to Ronsard the title of 
The French Poet by eminence. This occurred in the 
youth of the poet. The wine of success so brilliant 
turned the young fellow's head. He soon began to 
play lord paramount of Parnassus, with every air of 
one born to the purple. The kings of the earth vied 
with each other to do him honor. Ronsard affected 
scholarship, and the foremost scholars of his time 
were proud to place him with Homer and with Virgil 
on the roll of the poets. Ronsard' s peculiarity in 
style was the free use of words and constructions 
not properly French. Boileau indicated whence he 
enriched his vocabulary and his syntax, by satirically 
saying that Ronsard spoke Greek and Latin in French. 
At his death, Ronsard was almost literally buried 
under praises. Sainte-Beuve strikingly says that he 
seemed to go forward into posterity as into a temple. 
Sharp posthumous reprisals awaited the extrava- 
gant fame of Ronsard. Malherbe, coming in the 
next generation, legislator of Parnassus, laughed the 
literary pretensions of Ronsard to scorn. This stern 
critic of form, such is the story, marked up his copy 
of Ronsard with notes of censure so many, that a 
friend of his, seeing the annotated volume, observed, 
"What here is not marked, will be understood to 
have been approved by you." Whereupon Mal- 
herbe, taking his pen, with one indiscriminate stroke 
drew it abruptly through the whole volume. " There 
I Ronsardized," the contemptuous critic would ex- 
claim, when in reading his own verses to an ac- 



10 Classic French Course in English. 

quaintance, — for Malherbe was poet himself, — he 
happened to encounter a* word that struck him as 
harsh or improper. Malherbe, in short, sought to 
chasten and check the luxuriant overgrowth to 
which the example and method of the Pleiades 
were tending to push the language of poetry in 
French. The resultant effect of the two contrary 
tendencies — that of literary wantonness on the 
one hand, and that of literary prudery on the other 
— was at the same time to enrich and to purify 
French poetical diction. Balzac (the elder), close 
to Malherbe in time, performed a service for French 
prose similar to that which the latter performed for 
French verse. These two critical and literary powers 
brought in the reign of what is called classicism in 
France. French classicism had its long culmination 
under Louis XIV. 

But it was under Louis XIII., or rather under 
that monarch's great minister, Cardinal Richelieu, 
that the rich and splendid Augustan age of French 
literature was truly prepared. Two organized forces, 
one of them private and social, the other official and 
public, worked together, though sometimes perhaps 
not in harmony, to produce the magnificent literary 
result that illustrated the time of Louis XIV. Of 
these two organized forces, the Hotel de Eambouillet 
was one, and the French Academy was the other. 
The Hotel de Rambouillet has become the adopted 
name of a literary society, presided over by the fine 
inspiring genius of the beautiful and accomplished 



French Literature. 11 

Italian wife of the Marquis de Rambouillet, a lady 
who generously conceived the idea of rallying the 
feminine wit and virtue of the kingdom to exert a 
potent influence for regenerating the manners and 
morals, and indeed the literature, of France. At 
the high court of blended rank and fashion and 
beauty and polish and virtue and wit, thus estab- 
lished in the exquisitely buildecl and decorated sa- 
loons of the Rambouillet mansion, the selectest 
literary genius and fame of France were proud and 
glad to assemble for the discussion and criticism of 
literature. Here came Balzac and Voiture ; here 
Corneille read aloud his masterpieces before they 
were represented on the stage ; here Descartes 
philosophized ; here the large and splendid genius 
of Bossuet first unfolded itself to the world ; here 
Madame de Sevigne brought her bright, incisive wit, 
trebly commended by stainless reputation, unwither- 
ing beauty, and charming address, in the woman who 
wielded it. The noblest blood of France added the 
decoration and inspiration of their presence. It is 
not easy to overrate the diffusive beneficent influence 
that hence went forth to change the fashion of lite- 
rature, and to change the fashion of society, for the 
better. The Hotel de Rambouillet proper lasted two 
generations only ; but it had a virtual succession, 
wjiich, though sometimes interrupted, was scarcely 
extinct until the brilliant and beautiful Madame 
Recamier ceased, about the middle of the present 
century, to hold her famous salons in Paris. The 



12 Classic French Course in English. 

continuous fame and influence of the French Acad- 
emy, founded by Richelieu, everybody knows. No 
other European language has been elaborately and 
sedulously formed and cultivated like the French. 

But great authors are better improvers of a lan- 
guage than any societies, however influential. Cor- 
neille, Descartes, Pascal, did more for French style 
than either the Hotel de Rambouillet or the Acade- 
my, — more than both these two great literary socie- 
ties together. In verse, Racine, following Corneille, 
advanced in some important respects upon the ex- 
ample and lead of that great original master ; but 
in prose, when Pascal published his " Provincial 
Letters," French style reached at once a point of 
perfection beyond which it never since has gone. 
Bossuet, Bourdalaue, Feuelon, Massillon, Moliere, 
La Fontaine, Boileau, La Rochefoucauld, La Bru- 
y&re, — what a constellation of names are these, to 
glorify the age of Louis XIV. ! And Louis XIV. 
himself, royal embodiment of a literary good sense 
carried to the pitch of something very like real 
genius in judgment and taste, — what a sun was he 
(with that talent of his for kingship, probably never 
surpassed), to balance and to sway, from his un- 
shaken station, the august intellectual system t of 
which he alone constituted the despotic centre to 
attract and repel ! Seventy-two years long was this 
sole individual reign. Louis XIV. still sat on the 
throne of France when the seventeenth century be- 
came the eighteenth. 



French Literature. 13 

The eighteenth century was an age of universal 
reaction in France. Religion, or rather ecclesiasti- 
cism, — for, in the France of those times, religion 
was the Church, and the Church was the Roman 
Catholic hierarchy, — had been the dominant fashion 
under Louis XIV. Infidelity was a broad literary 
mark, written all over the face of the eighteenth 
centur}'. It was the hour and power of the Ency- 
clopaedists and the Philosophers, — of Voltaire, of 
Diderot, of D'Alembert, of Rousseau. Montes- 
quieu, though contemporary, belongs apart from 
these writers. More really original, more truly 
philosophical, he was far less revolutionary, far less 
destructive, than they. Still, his influence was, on 
the whole, exerted in the direction, if not of infi- 
delity, at least of religious indifferentism. The 
French Revolution was laid in train by the great 
popular writers whom we have now named, and by 
their fellows. It needed only the spark, which the 
proper occasion would be sure soon to strike out, 
and the awful, earth-shaking explosion would follow. 
After the Revolution, during the First Empire, so 
called, — the usurpation, that is, of Napoleon Bona- 
parte, — literature was well-nigh extinguished in 
France. The names, however, then surpassingly 
brilliant, of Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, 
belong to this period. 

Three centuries have now elapsed since the date 
of "The Pleiades." Throughout this long period, 
French literature has been chiefly under the sway of 



14 Classic French Course in English, 

that spirit of classicism in style which the reaction 
against Ronsardism, led first by Malherbe and after- 
wards by Boileau, had established as the national 
standard in literary taste and aspiration. But Rous- 
seau's genius acted as a powerful solvent of the 
classic tradition. Chateaubriand's influence was 
felt on the same side, continuing Rousseau's. 
George Sand, too, and Lamartine, were forces that 
strengthened this component. Finally, the great 
personality of Victor Hugo proved potent enough 
definitively to break the spell that had been so long 
and so heavily laid on the literary development of 
France. The bloodless warfare was fierce between 
the revolutionary Romanticists and the conservative 
Classicists in literary style, but the victory seemed 
at last to remain with the advocates of the new 
romantic revival. It looked, on the face of the 
matter, like a signal triumph of originality over pre- 
scription, of genius over criticism, of power over 
rule. We still live in the midst of the dying echoes 
of this resonant strife. Perhaps it is too early, as 
yet, to determine on which side, by the merit of 
the cause, the advantage truly belongs. But, by 
the merit of the respective champions, the result 
was, for a time at least, triumphantly decided in 
favor of the Romanticists, against the Classicists. 
The weighty authority, however, of Sainte-Beuve, 
at first thrown into the scale that at length would 
sink, was thence withdrawn, and at last, if not reso- 
lutely cast upon the opposite side of the balance, 



French Literature. 15 

was left wavering in a kind of equipoise between the 
one and the other. But our preliminary sketch has 
already passed the limit within which our choice of 
authors for representation is necessarily confined. 

With first a few remarks, naturally suggested, 
that may be useful, on the general subject thus 
rather touched merely than handled, the present 
writer gives way to let now the representative au- 
thors themselves, selected for the purpose, supply 
to the reader a just and lively idea of French litera- 
ture. 

The first thing, perhaps, to strike the thoughtful 
mind in a comprehensive view of the subject, is not 
so much the length — though this is remarkable — 
as the long continuity of French literary history. 
From its beginning down to the actual moment, 
French literature has suffered no serious break in 
the course of its development. There have been 
periods of greater, and periods of less, prosperity 
and fruit ; but wastes of marked suspension and 
barrenness, there have been none. 

The second thing noticeable is, that French litera- 
ture has, to a singular degree, lived an independent 
life of its own. It has found copious springs of 
health and growth within its own bosom. 

But then, a third thing to be also observed, is that, 
on the other hand, the touch of foreign influence, 
felt and acknowledged by this most proudly and 
self-sufficiently national of literatures, has proved 
to it, at various epochs-, a sovereign force of revival 



16 Classic French Course in English. 

and elastic expansion. Thus, the great renascence 
in the sixteenth century of ancient Greek and Latin 
letters was new life to French literature. So, again, 
Spanish literature, brought into contact with French 
through Corneille and Moliere with others, gave to 
the national mind of France a new literary launch. 
But the most recent and perhaps the most remark- 
able example of foreign influence quickening French 
literature to make it freshly fruitful, is supplied in 
the great romanticizing movement under the lead 
of Victor Hugo. English literature — especially 
Shakspeare — was largely the pregnant cause of 
this attempted emancipation of the French literary 
mind from the burden of classicism. 

A fourth very salient trait in French literary 
history consists in the self-conscious, elaborate, 
persistent efforts put forth from time to time by 
individuals, and by organizations, both public and 
private, in France, to improve the language, and to 
elevate the literature, of the nation. We know of 
nothing altogether comparable to this anywhere else 
in the literature of the world. 

A fifth striking thing about French literature is, 
that it has to a degree, as we believe beyond paral- 
lel, exercised a real and vital influence on the char- 
acter and the fortune of the nation. The social, the 
political, the moral, the religious, history of France 
is from age to age a faithful reflex of the changing 
phases of its literature. Of course, a reciprocal in- 
fluence has been constantly reflected back and forth 



French Literature. 17 

from the nation upon its literature, as well as from 
its literature upon the nation. But where else in the 
world has it ever been so extraordinarily, we may 
say so appallingly, true as in France, that the nation 
was such because such was its literature ? 

French literature, it will at once be seen, is a 
study possessing, beyond the literary, a social, a 
political, and even a religious, interest. 

Readers desiring to push their conversance with 
the literary history of France farther than the pres- 
ent volume will enable them to do, will consult with 
profit either the Primer, or the Short History, of 
French Literature, by Mr. George Saintsbury. Mr. 
Saintsbury is a well-informed writer, who, if the 
truth must be told, diffuses himself too widely to do 
his best possible work. He has, however, made 
French literature a specialty, and he is in general a 
trustworthy authority on the subject. 

Another writer on the subject is Mr. H. Van 
Laun. Him, although a predecessor of his own in 
the field, Mr. Saintsbury severely ignores, by claim- 
ing that he is himself the first to write in English a 
history of French literature based on original and 
independent reading of the authors. We are bound 
to say that Mr. Van Laun's work is of very poor 
quality. It offers, indeed, to the reader one ad- 
vantage not afforded by either of Mr. Saintsbury's 
works, the advantage, namely, of illustrative ex- 
tracts from the authors treated, — extracts, however, 
not unfrequently marred by wretched translation. 



18 Classic French Course in English. 

The cyclopaedias are, some of them, both in articles 
on particular authors and in their sketches of French 
literary history as a whole, good sources of general 
information on the subject. Readers who command 
the means of comparing several different cyclopae- 
dias, or several successive editions of some one 
cyclopaedia, as, for example, the " Encyclopaedia 
Britannica," will find enlightening and stimulating 
the not always harmonious views presented on the 
same topics. Ilallam's " History of Literature in 
Europe " is an additional authority by no means to 
be overlooked. 



II. 

FROISSART. 
1337-1410. 



French literature, for the purposes of the present 
volume, ma}^ be said to commence with Froissart. 
Froissart is a kind of mediaeval Herodotus. His 
time is, indeed, almost this side the middle ages ; 
but he belongs by character and by s}?mpathy rather 
to the mediaeval than to the modern world. He is 
delightfully like Herodotus in the style and the 
spirit of his narrative. Like Herodotus, he became 
a traveller in order to become an historian. Like 
Herodotus, he was cosmopolite enough not to be 



Froissart. 19 

narrowly patriotic. Frenchman though he was, he 
took as much pleasure in recounting English victo- 
ries as he did in recounting French. His country- 
men have even accused him of unpatriotic partiality 
for the English. His Chronicles have been, perhaps, 
more popular in their English form than in their 
original French. Two prominent English transla- 
tions have been made, of which the later, that 
by Thomas Johnes, is now most read. Sir Wal- 
ter Scott thought the earlier excelled in charm of 
style. 

Jehan or Jean Froissart was a native of Valen- 
ciennes. His father meant to make a priest of him, 
but the boy had other tastes of his own. Before he 
was well out of his teens, he began writing history. 
This was under the patronage of a great noble. Frois- 
sart was all his life a natural courtier. He throve 
on the patronage of the great. It was probably not 
a fawning spirit in him that made him this kind of 
man ; it was rather an innate love of splendor and 
high exploit. He admired chivalry, then in its last 
days, and he painted it with the passion of an ideal- 
izer. His father had been an heraldic painter, so it 
was perhaps an hereditary strain in the son that 
naturally attached him to rank and royalty. The 
people — that is, the promiscuous mass of mankind 
— hardly exist to Froissart. His pages, spacious as 
they are, have scarcely room for more than kings 
and nobles, and knights and squires. He is a pic- 
turesque and romantic historian, in whose chronicles 



20 Classic French Course in English. 

the glories of the world of chivalry — a world, as we 
have said, already dying, and so soon to disappear 
— are fixed forever on an ample canvas, in moving 
form and shifting color, to delight the backward- 
looking imagination of mankind. 

Froissart, besides being chronicler, was something 
of a poet. It would still be possible to confront one 
who should call this in question, with thirty thou- 
sand surviving verses from the chronicler^ pen. 
Quantity, indeed, rather than quality, is the strong 
point of Froissart as poet. 

He had no sooner finished the first part of his 
Chronicles, a compilation from the work of an earlier 
hand, than he posted to England for the purpose 
of formally presenting his work to the Queen, a 
princess of Hainault. She rewarded him hand- 
somely. Woman enough, too, she was, woman under 
the queen, duly to despatch him back again to his 
native land, where the 3'oung fellow's heart, she saw, 
was lost to a noble lady, whom, from his inferior 
station, he could woo onty as a moth might woo the 
moon. He subsequently returned to Great Britain, 
and rode about on horseback gathering materials of 
histoiy. He visited Italy under excellent auspices, 
and, together with Chaucer and with Petrarch, wit- 
nessed a magnificent marriage ceremonial in Milan. 
Froissart continued to travel far and wide, always 
a favorite with princes, but always intent on achiev- 
ing his projected work. He finally died at Chimay, 
where he had spent his closing years in rounding 



Froissart. 21 

out to their completeness his "Chronicles of Eng- 
land, France, and the Adjoining Countries." 

Froissart is the most leisurely of historians, or, 
rather, he is a writer who presupposes the largest 
allowance of leisure at the command of his readers. 
He does not seek proportion and perspective. He 
simply tells us all he had been able to find out re- 
specting each transaction in its turn as it successively 
comes up in the progress of his narrative. If he 
goes wrong to-day, he will perhaps correct himself 
to-morrow, or day after to-morrow, — this not by 
changing the first record where it stands, to make it 
right, but by inserting a note of his mistake at the 
point, whatever it may be, which he shall chance to 
have reached in the work of composition when the 
new and better light breaks in on his eyes. The 
student is thus never quite certain but that what he 
is at one moment reading in his author, may be an 
error of which at some subsequent moment he will be 
faithfully advised. A little discomposing, this, but 
such is Froissart ; and it is the philosophical way to 
take your author as he is, and make the best of him. 

Of such an historian, an historian so diffuse, and 
so little selective, it would obviously be difficult to 
give any suitably brief specimen that should seem 
to present a considerable historic action in full. We 
go to Froissart' s account of the celebrated battle 
of Poitiers (France). This was fought in 1356, 
between Edward the Black Prince on the English 
side, and King John on the side of the French. 



22 Classic French Course in English. 

King John of the French was, of course, a great 
prize to be secured by the victorious English. 
There was eager individual rivalry as to what par- 
ticular warrior should be adjudged his true captor. 
Froissart thus describes the strife and the issue : — 

There was much pressing at this time, through eager- 
ness to take the king; and those who were nearest to him, 
and knew him, cried out, " Surrender yourself, surrender 
yourself, or you are a dead man!" In that part of the field 
was a young knight from St. Omer, who was engaged by a 
salary in the service of the King of England ; his name was 
Denys de Morbeque ; who for five years had attached himself 
to the English, on account of having been banished in his 
younger days from France, for a murder committed in an 
affray at St. Omer. It fortunately happened for this knight, 
that he was at the time near to the King of France, when he 
was so much pulled about. He, by dint of force, for he was 
very strong and robust, pushed through the crowd, and said 
to the king, in good French, " Sire, sire, surrender yourself ! " 
The king, who found himself very disagreeably situated, 
turning to him, asked, " To whom shall I surrender myself ? 
to whom ? Where is my cousin, the Prince of Wales ? If 
I could see him, I would speak to him." — "Sire," replied Sir 
Denys, " he is not here; but surrender yourself to me, and I 
will lead you to him." — "Who are you?" said the king. 
" Sire, I am Denys de Morbeque, a knight from Artois; but I 
serve the King of England because I cannot belong to France, 
having forfeited all I possessed there." The king then 
gave him his right-hand glove, and said, " I surrender my- 
self to you." There was much crowding and pushing about ; 
for every one was eager to cry out, "I have taken him!" 
Neither the king nor his youngest son Philip were able to 
get forward, and free themselves from the throng. . . . 

The Prince [of Wales] asked them [his marshals] if they 
knew any thing of the King of France: they replied, " No, 



Froissart. 23 

sir, not for a certainty; bnt we believe he must be either 
killed or made prisoner, since he has never quitted his bat- 
talion." The prince then, addressing the Earl of War- 
wick and Lord Cobham, said, " I beg of you to mount your 
horses, and ride over the field, so that on your return you 
may bring me some certain intelligence of him." The two 
barons, immediately mounting their horses, left the prince, 
and made for a small hillock, that they might look about 
them. From their stand they perceived a crowd of men- 
at-arms on foot, who were advancing very slowly. The 
King of France was in the midst of them, and in great dan- 
ger; for the English and Gascons had taken him from Sir 
Denys de Morbeque, and were disputing who should have 
him, the stoutest bawling out, " It is I that have got him." — 
" No, no," replied the others : " we have him." The king, to 
escape from this peril, said, " Gentlemen, gentlemen, I pray 
you conduct me and my son in a courteous manner to my 
cousin the prince; and do not make such a riot about my 
capture, for I am so great a lord that I can make all suffi- 
ciently rich." These words, and others which fell from the 
king, appeased them a little; but the disputes were always 
beginning again, and they did not move a step without riot- 
ing. When the two barons saw this troop of people, they 
descended from the hillock, and, sticking spurs into their 
horses, made up to them. On their arrival, they asked what 
was the matter. They were answered, that it was the King 
of France, who had been made prisoner, and that upward 
of ten knights and squires challenged him at the same time, 
as belonging to each of them. The two barons then pushed 
through the crowd by main force, and ordered all to draw 
aside. They commanded, in the name of the prince, and 
under pain of instant death, that every one should keep his 
distance, and not approach unless ordered or desired so to 
do. They all retreated behind the king * and the two barons, 
dismounting, advanced to the king with profound reverences, 
and conducted him in a peaceable manner to the Prince of 
Wales. 



24 Classic French Course in English. 

We continue our citation from Froissart with the 
brief chapter in which the admiring chronicler tells 
the gallant story of the Black Prince's behavior as 
host toward his royal captive, King John of France 
(it was the evening after the battle) : — 

When evening was come, the Prince of Wales gave a 
supper in his pavilion to the King of France, and to the 
greater part of the princes and barons who were prisoners. 
The prince seated the King of France, and his son the Lord 
Philip, at an elevated and well-covered table: with them 
were Sir James de Bourbon, the Lord John d'Artois, the 
earls of Tancarville, of Estampes, of Dammartin, of Gra- 
ville, and the Lord of Partenay. The other knights and 
squires were placed at different tables. The prince himself 
served the king's table, as well as the others, with every 
mark of humility, and would not sit down at it, in spite of 
all his entreaties for him so to do, saying that "he was not 
worthy of such an honor, nor did it appertain to him to seat 
himself at the table of so great a king, or of so valiant a 
man as he had shown himself by his actions that day." He 
added, also, with a noble air, "Dear sir, do not make a poor 
meal, because the Almighty God has not gratified your 
wishes in the event of this day; for be assured that my lord 
and father will show you every honor and friendship in his 
power, and will arrange your ransom so reasonably, that you 
will henceforward always remain friends. In my opinion, 
you have cause to be glad that the success of this battle did 
not turn out as you desired; for you have this day acquired 
such high renown for prowess, that you have surpassed all 
the best knights on your side. I do not, dear sir, say this 
to natter you ; for all those of our side who have seen and 
observed the actions of each party, have unanimously 
allowed this to be your due, and decree you the prize and 
garland for it." At the end of this speech, there were mur- 
murs of praise heard from every one; and the French said 



Froissart. 25 

the prince had spoken nobly and truly, and that he would 
be one of the most gallant princes in Christendom if God 
should grant him life to pursue his career of glory. 

A splendid and a gracious figure the Black Prince 
makes in the pages of Froissart. It was great good 
fortune for the posthumous fame of chivalry, that the 
institution should have come by an artist so gifted 
and so loyal as this Frenchman, to deliver its fea- 
tures in portrait to after-times, before the living 
original vanished forever from the view of histor}\ 
How much the fiction of Sir Walter Scott owes to 
Froissart, and to Philip de Comines after Froissart, 
those only can understand who have read both the 
old chronicles and the modern romances. 

It was one of the congenial labors of Sidney 
Lanier — pure flame of genius that late burned it- 
self out so swiftly among us ! — to edit a reduction 
or abridgment of Froissart' s Chronicles dedicated 
especially to the use of the young. " The Boy's 
Froissart," he called it. This book is enriched with 
a wise and genial appreciation of Froissart' s quality 
by his American editor. 

Whoever reads Froissart needs to remember that 
the old chronicler is too much enamoured of chivalry, 
and is too easily dazzled by splendor of rank, to be 
a rigidly just censor of faults committed by knights 
and nobles and kings. Froissart, in truth, seems 
to have been nearly destitute of the sentiment of 
humanity. War to him was chiefly a game and a 
spectacle. 



26 Classic French Course in English. 

Our presentation of Froissart must close with a 
single passage additional, a picturesque one, in which 
the chronicler describes the style of living witnessed 
by him at the court — we may not unfitly so apply 
a royal word — of the Count de Foix. The reader 
must understand, while he reads what we here show, 
that Froissart himself, in close connection, relates 
at full, in the language of an informant of his, how 
this magnificent Count de Foix had previously killed, 
with a knife at his throat, his own and his only son. 
"I was truly sorry," so, at the conclusion of the 
story, Froissart, with characteristic direction of 
his sympathy, says, cw for the count his father, 
whom I found a magnificent, generous, and cour- 
teous lord, and also for the country that was discon- 
tented for want of an heir." Here is the promised 
passage ; it occurs in the ninth chapter of the third 
volume : — 

Count Gaston Phoebus de Foix, of whom I am now speak- 
ing, was at that time fifty-nine years old ; and I must say, 
that although I have seen very many knights, kings, princes, 
and others, 1 have never seen any so handsome, either in the 
form of his limbs and shape, or in countenance, which was 
fair and ruddy, with gray and amorous eyes, that gave 
delight whenever he chose to express affection. He was so 
perfectly formed, one could not praise him too much. He 
loved earnestly the things he ought to love, and hated those 
which it was becoming him so to hate. He was a prudent 
knight, full of enterprise and wisdom. He had never any 
men of abandoned character with him, reigned prudently, 
and was constant in his devotions. There were regular 
nocturnals from the Psalter, prayers from the rituals to the 



Froissart. 27 

. Virgin, to the Holy Ghost, and from the burial service. 
He had every day distributed as alms, at his gate, five florins 
in small coin, to all comers. He was liberal and courteous 
in his gifts, and well knew how to take when it was proper, 
and to give back where he had confidence. He mightily 
loved dogs above all other animals, and during the summer 
and winter amused himself much with hunting. . . . 

When he quitted his chamber at midnight for supper, 
twelve servants bore each a lighted torch before him, which 
were placed near his table, and gave a brilliant light to 
the apartment. The hall was full of knights and squires, 
and there were plenty of tables laid out for any person who 
chose to sup. No one spoke to him at his table, unless he 
first began a conversation. He commonly ate heartily of 
poultry, but only the wings and thighs; for in the daytime, 
he neither ate nor drank much. He had great pleasure in 
hearing minstrels; as he himself was a proficient in the 
science, and made his secretaries sing songs, ballads, and 
roundelays. He remained at table about two hours, and 
was pleased when fanciful dishes were served up to him, 
which having seen, he immediately sent them to the tables 
of his knights and squires. 

In short, every thing considered, though I had before been 
in several courts of kings, dukes, princes, counts, and noble 
ladies, I was never at one that pleased me more, nor was I 
ever more delighted with feats of arms, than at this of the 
Count de Foix. There were knights and squires to be seen 
in every chamber, hall, and court, going backwards and 
forwards, and conversing on arms and amours. Every thing 
honorable was there to be found. All intelligence from 
distant countries was there to be learnt, for the gallantry of 
the count had brought visitors from all parts of the world. 
It was there I was informed of the greater part of those 
events which had happened in Spain, Portugal, Arragon, 
Navarre, England, Scotland, and on the borders of Lan- 
guedoc ; for I saw, during my residence, knights and squires 



28 Classic French Course in English. 

arrive from every nation. I therefore made inquiries from 
them, or from the count himself, who cheerfully conversed 
with me. 

The foregoing is one of the most celebrated pas- 
sages of description in Froissart. At the same time 
that it discloses the form and spirit of those vanished 
days, which will never come again to the world, it 
discloses likewise the character of the man, who 
must indeed have loved it all well, to have been 
able so well to describe it. 

We take now a somewhat long forward step, in 
going, as we do, at once from Froissart-to Rabelais. 
Comines, lying between, we must reluctantly pass, 
with thus barely mentioning his name. 



III. 

RABELAIS. 
1495-1553. 



Rabelais is one of the most famous of writers. 
But he is at the same time incomparably the coarsest. 

The real quality of such a writer, it is evidently 
out of the question to exhibit at all adequately here. 
But equally out of the question it is to omit Rabelais 
altogether from an account of French literature. : 

Of the life of Francois Rabelais the man, these 



Rabelais. 29 

few facts will be sufficient to know. In early 
youth he joined the monastic order of the Francis- 
cans. That order hated letters ; but Rabelais loved 
them. He, in fact, conceived a voracious ambition 
of knowledge. He became immensely learned. 
This fact, with what it implies of long labor pa- 
tiently achieved, is enough to show that Rabelais 
was not without seriousness of character. But he 
was much more a merry-andrew than a pattern 
monk. He made interest enough with influential 
friends to get himself transferred from the Francis- 
cans to the Benedictines, an order more favorable 
to studious pursuits. But neither among the Bene- 
dictines was this roistering spirit at ease. He left 
them irregularly, but managed to escape punishment 
for his irregularity. At last, after various vicissi- 
tudes of occupation, he settled down as curate of 
Meudon, where (the place, however, is doubtful, as 
also the date) in 1553 he died. He was past fifty 
years of age before he finished the work which has 
made him famous. 

This work is "The Life of Gargantua and Pan- 
tagruel," a grotesque and nondescript production, 
founded, probably, on some prior romance or tradi- 
tionary tale of giants. The narrative of Rabelais is 
a tissue of adventures shocking every idea of veri- 
similitude, and serving only as a vehicle for the 
strange humor of the writer. The work is replete 
with evidences of Rabelais 's learning. It would be 
useless to attempt giving any abstract or analysis 



30 Classic French Course in English. 

of a book which is simply a'wild chaos of material 
jumbled together with little regard to logic, order, 
or method of whatever sort. We shall better 
represent its character by giving a few specimen 
extracts. 

Rabelais begins his romance characteristically. 
According as you understand him here, you judge 
the spirit of the whole work. Either he now gives 
you a clew by which, amid the mazes of apparent 
sheer frivolity on his part, you may follow till you 
win your way to some veiled serious meaning that 
he had all the time, but never dared frankly to 
avow ; or else he is playfully misleading you on a 
false scent, which, however long held to, will bring 
you out nowhere — in short, is quizzing you. Let 
the reader judge for himself. Here is the opening 
passage, — the " Author's Prologue," it is called in 
the English translation executed by Sir Thomas 
Urquhart and Motteux ; a version, by the way, 
which, with whatever faults of too much freedom, is 
the work of minds and consciences singularly sym- 
pathetic with the genius of the original ; the English 
student is perhaps hardly at all at disadvantage, in 
comparison with the French, for the full appreciation 
of Rabelais : — 

Most noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice 
precious pockified blades (for to you, and none else, do I 
dedicate my writings), Alcibiades, in that dialogue of Plato's 
which is entitled, " The Banquet," whilst he was setting forth 
the praises of his schoolmaster Socrates (without all question 



Rabelais. 31 

the prince of philosophers), amongst other discourses to that 
purpose said that he resembled the Sileni. Sileni of old 
were little boxes, like those we now may see in the shops 
of apothecaries, painted on the outside with wanton toyish 
figures, as harpies, satyrs, bridled geese, horned hares, sad- 
dled ducks, flying goats, thiller harts, and other such coun- 
terfeited pictures, at pleasure, to excite people unto laughter, 
as Silenus himself, who was the foster-father of good Bac- 
chus, was wont to do; but within those capricious caskets 
called Sileni, were carefully preserved and kept many rich 
and fine drugs, such as balm, ambergreese, amomon, musk, 
civet, with several kinds of precious stones, and other things 
of great price. Just such another thing was Socrates; for 
to have eyed his outside, and esteemed of him by his exte- 
rior appearance, you would not have given the peel of an 
onion for him, so deformed he was in body, and ridiculous 
in his gesture. . . . Opening this box, you would have found 
within it a heavenly and inestimable drug, a more than hu- 
man understanding, an admirable virtue, matchless learning, 
invincible courage, inimitable sobriety, certain contentment 
of mind, perfect assurance, and an incredible disregard of 
all that for which men commonly do so much watch, run, 
sail, fight, travel, toil, and turmoil themselves. 

Whereunto (in your opinion) doth this little flourish of 
a preamble tend? For so much as you, my good disciples, 
and some other jolly fools of ease and leisure, . . . are too 
ready to judge, that there is nothing in them but jests, 
mockeries, lascivious discourse, and recreative lies; . . . 
therefore is it, that you must open the book, and seriously 
consider of the matter treated in it. Then shall you find 
that it containeth things of far higher value than the box 
did promise; that is to say, that the subject thereof is not so 
foolish, as by the title at the first sight it would appear to 
be. 

. . . Did you ever see a dog with a marrow-bone in his 
mouth? . . . Like him, you must, by a sedulous lecture 



32 Classic French Course in English. 

[reading], and frequent meditation, break the bone, and 
suck out the marrow; that is, my allegorical sense, or the 
things I to myself propose to be signified by these Pytha- 
gorical symbols ; . . . the most glorious doctrines and dread- 
ful mysteries, as well in what concerneth our religion, as 
matters of the public state and life economical. 

Up to this point, the candid reader has probably 
been conscious of a growing persuasion that this 
author must be at bottom a serious if also a humor- 
ous man, — a man, therefore, excusably intent not 
to be misunderstood as a mere buffoon. But now 
let the candid reader proceed with the following, 
and confess, upon his honor, if he is not scandalized 
and perplexed. What shall be said of a writer who 
thus plays with his reader? 

Do you believe, upon your conscience, that Homer, 
whilst he was couching his Iliad and Odyssey, had any 
thought upon those allegories which Plutarch, Heraclides 
Ponticus, Eustathius, Phornutus, squeezed out of him, and 
which Politian filched again from them ? If you trust it, 
with neither hand nor foot do you come near to my opinion, 
which judgeth them to have been as little dreamed of by 
Homer, as the gospel sacraments were by Ovid, in his Meta- 
morphoses ; though a certain gulligut friar, and true bacon- 
picker, would have undertaken to prove it, if, perhaps, he 
had met with as very fools as himself, and, as the proverb 
says, " a lid worthy of such a kettle." 

If you give any credit thereto, why do not you the same 
to these jovial new Chronicles of mine ? Albeit, when I 
did dictate them, I thought thereof no more than you, who 
possibly were drinking the whilst, as I was. For, in the 
composing of this lordly book, I never lost nor bestowed 
any more, nor any other time, than what was appointed to 



Rabelais. 33 

serve me for taking of my bodily refection ; that is, whilst I 
was eating and drinking. And, indeed, that is the fittest 
and most proper hour, wherein to write these high matters 
and deep sentences ; as Homer knew very well, the paragon 
of all philologues, and Ennius, the father of the Latin 
poets, as Horace calls him, although a certain sneaking 
jobbernol alleged that his verses smelled more of the wine 
than oil. 

Does this writer quiz his reader, or, in good faith, 
give him a needed hint ? Who shall decide ? 

We have let our first extract thus run on to some 
length, both for the reason that the passage is as 
representative as any we could properly offer of the 
quality of Rabelais, and also for the reason that 
the key of interpretation is here placed in the hand 
of the reader, for unlocking the enigma of this re- 
markable book. The extraordinary horse-play of 
pleasantry, which makes Rabelais unreadable for the 
general public of to-day, begins so promptly, affect- 
ing the very prologue, that we could not present 
even that piece of writing entire in our extract. 
We are informed that the circulation in England of 
the works of Rabelais, in translation, has been in- 
terfered with by the English government, on the 
ground of their indecency. We are bound to admit, 
that, if any writings whatever were to be suppressed 
on that ground, the writings of Rabelais are certainly 
entitled to be of the number. It is safe to say that 
never, no, not even in the boundless license of the 
comedy of Aristophanes, was more flagrant inde- 
cency, and indecency proportionately* more redun- 



34 Classic French Course in English. 

dant in volume, perpetrated in literature, than was 
done by Rabelais. Indecency, however, it is, rather 
than strict lasciviousness. Rabelais sinned against 
manners, more than he sinned against morals. But 
his obscenity is an ocean, without bottom or shore. 
Literally, he sticks at nothing that is coarse. Nay, 
this is absurdly short of expressing the fact. The 
genius of Rabelais teems with invention of coarse- 
ness, beyond what any one could conceive as pos- 
sible, who had not taken his measure of possibility 
from Rabelais himself. And his diction was as 
opulent as his invention. 

Such is the character of Rabelais the author. 
What, then, was it, if not fondness for paradox, 
that could prompt Coleridge to say, " I could write 
a treatise in praise of the moral elevation of Rabe- 
lais' works, which would make the church stare 
and the conventicle groan, and yet would be truth, 
and nothing but the truth "? If any thing besides 
fondness for paradox inspired Coleridge in saying 
this, it must, one would guess, have been belief on 
his part in the allegorical sense hidden deep under- 
neath the monstrous mass of the Rabelaisian buf- 
foonery. A more judicial sentence is that of 
Hallam, the historian of the literature of Europe: 
"He [Rabelais] is never serious in a single page, 
and seems to have had little other aim, in his first 
two volumes, than to pour out the exuberance of 
his animal gayety." 

The supply of animal gayety in this man was 



Rabelais. 35 

something portentous. One cannot, however, but 
feel that he forces it sometimes, as sometimes did 
Dickens those exhaustless animal spirits of his. A 
very common trick of the Rabelaisian humor is to 
multiply specifications, or alternative expressions, 
one after another, almost without end. From the 
second book of his romance, — an afterthought, 
probably, of continuation to his unexpectedly suc- 
cessful first book, — we take the last paragraph of 
the prologue, which shows this. The veracious his- 
torian makes obtestation of the strict truth of his 
narrative, and imprecates all sorts of evil upon such 
as do not believe it absolutely. We cleanse our 
extract a little : — 

And, therefore, to make an end of this Prologue, even 
as I give myself to an hundred thousand panniers-full of 
fair devils, body and soul, ... in case that I lie so much as 
one single word in this whole history; after the like manner, 
St. Anthony's fire burn you, Mahoom's disease whirl you, 
the squinance with a stitch in your side, and the wolf in 
your stomach truss you, the bloody flux seize upon you, the 
cursed sharp inflammations of wild fire, as slender and thin 
as cow's hair strengthened with quicksilver, enter into you, 
. . . and. like those of Sodom and Gomorrha, may you fall 
into sulphur, fire, and bottomless pits, in case you do not 
firmly believe all that I shall relate unto you in this present 
Chronicle. 

So much for Rabelais' s prologue. Our readers 
must now see something of what, under pains and 
penalties denounced so dire, they are bound to be- 
lieve. We condense and defecate for this purpose 



36 Classic French Course in English. 

the thirty- eighth chapter of the first book, which is 
staggeringly entitled, " How Gargantua did eat up 
Six Pilgrims in a Sallad '\: — 

The story requireth that we relate that which happened 
unto six pilgrims, who came from Sebastian near to Nantes; 
and who, for shelter that night, being afraid of the enemy, 
had hid themselves in the garden upon the chickling peas, 
among the cabbages and lettuces. Gargantua, finding him- 
self somewhat dry, asked whether they could get any lettuce 
to make him a sallad; and, hearing that there were the 
greatest and fairest in the country, — for they were as great 
as plum trees, or as walnut trees, — he would go thither 
himself, and brought thence in his hand what he thought 
good, and withal carried away the six pilgrims, who were in 
so great fear that they did not dare to speak nor cough. 
Washing them, therefore, first at the fountain, the pilgrims 
said one to another, softly, "What shall we do? We are 
almost drowned here amongst these lettuce : shall we speak ? 
But, if we speak, he will kill us for spies." And, as they 
were thus deliberating what to do, Gargantua put them, 
with the lettuce, into a platter of the house, as large as the 
huge tun of the White Friars of the Cistertian order; which 
done, with oil, vinegar, and salt, he ate them up, to refresh 
himself a little before supper, and had already swallowed up 
five of the pilgrims, the sixth being in the platter, totally 
hid under a lettuce, except his bourbon, or staff, that ap- 
peared, and nothing else. Which Grangousier [Gargantua' s 
father] seeing, said to Gargantua, "I think that is the horn 
of a shell snail : do not eat it." — " Why not ? " said Gargan- 
tua; "they are good all this month:" which he no sooner 
said, but, drawing up the staff, and therewith taking up the 
pilgrim, he ate him very well, then drank a terrible draught 
of excellent white wine. The pilgrims, thus devoured, 
made shift to save themselves, as well as they could, by 
drawing their bodies out of the reach of the grinders of his 



Hahelais. 37 

teeth, but could not escape from thinking they had been put 
in the lowest dungeon of a prison. And, when Gargantua 
whiffed the great draught, they thought to have drowned in 
his mouth, and the flood of wine had almost carried them 
away into the gulf of his stomach. Xevertheless, skipj)ing 
with their bourbons, as St. Michael's palmers used to do, 
they sheltered themselves from the danger of that inunda- 
tion under the banks of his teeth. But one of them, by 
chance, groping, or sounding the country with his staff, to 
try whether they were in safety or no, struck hard against 
the cleft of a hollow tooth, and hit the mandibulary sinew 
or nerve of the jaw, which put Gargantua to very great 
pain, so that he began to cry for the rage that he felt. To 
ease himself, therefore, of his smarting ache, he called for 
his tooth-picker, and, rubbing towards a young walnut-tree, 
where they lay skulking, unnestled you my gentlemen pil- 
grims. For he caught one by the legs, another by the scrip, 
another by the pocket, another by the scarf, another by the 
band of the breeches; and the poor fellow that had hurt 
him with the bourbon, him he hooked to him by [another 
part of his clothes]. . . . The pilgrims, thus dislodged, ran 
away. 

Rabelais closes his story with jocose irreverent 
application of Scripture, — a manner of his which 
gives some color to the tradition of a biblical pun 
made by him on his death-bed. 

The closest English analogue to Eabelais is un- 
doubtedly Dean Swift. We probably never should 
have had ,; Gulliver's Travels" from Swift, if we 
had not first had Gargantua and Pantagruel from 
Eabelais. Swift, however, differs from Eabelais as 
well as resembles him. Whereas Eabelais is simply 
monstrous in invention, Swift in invention submits 



38 Classic French Course in English. 

himself loyally to law. Give Swift his world of 
Liliput and Brobclingnag respectively, and all, after 
that, is quite natural and probable. The reduction 
or the exaggeration is made upon a mathematically 
calculated scale. For such verisimilitude Rabelais 
cares not a straw. His various inventions are 
recklessly independent one of another. A character- 
istic of Swift thus is scrupulous conformit} 7 to whim- 
sical law. Rabelais is remarkable for whimsical 
disregard of even his own whimseys. Voltaire put 
the matter with his usual felicity, — Swift is Rabelais 
in his senses. 

One of the most celebrated — justly celebrated — 
of Rabelais 's imaginations is that of the Abbey of 
Theleme [Thelema]. This constitutes a kind of 
Rabelaisian Utopia. It was proper of the released 
monk to give his Utopian dream the form of an 
abbe} T , but an abbey in which the opposite should 
obtain of all that he had so heartily hated in his own 
monastic experience. A humorously impossible 
place and state was the Abbey of Theleme, — a kind 
of sportive Brook Farm set far away in a world 
unrealized. How those Thelemites enjoyed life, 
to be sure ! It was like endless plum pudding — 
for everybody to eat, and nobody to prepare : — 

All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, 
but according to their own free will and pleasure. They 
rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did 
eat, drink, labor, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and 
were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer 
to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; 



Rabelais. 39 

for so had Gargantua established it. Li all their rule, and 
strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to 
be observed, — 

DO WHAT THOU WILT. 

. . . By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emu- 
lation, to do all of them what they saw did please one. If 
any of the gallants or ladies should say, Let us drink, they 
would all drink. If any one of them said, Let us play, they 
all played. If one said, Let us go a walking into the fields, 
they went all. . . . There was neither he nor she amongst 
them, but could read, write, sing, play upon several musical 
instruments, speak five or six several languages, and compose 
in them all very quaintly, both in verse and prose. Never 
were seen so valiant knights, so noble and worthy, so dex- 
trous and skilful both on foot and a horseback, more brisk 
and lively, more nimble and quick, or better handling all 
manner of weapons than were there. Never were seen 
ladies so proper and handsome, so miniard and dainty, less 
forward, or more ready with their hand, and with their 
needle, in every honest and free action belonging to that sex, 
than were there. For this reason, when the time came, that 
any man of the said abbey, either at the request of his 
parents, or for some other cause, had a mind to go out of it, 
he carried along with him one of the ladies, namely her who 
had before that accepted him as her lover, and they were 
married together. 

The foregoing is one of the most purely sweet 
imaginative passages in Rabelais' s works. The rep- 
resentation, as a whole, sheathes, of course, a keen 
satire on the religious houses. Real religion, Rabe- 
lais nowhere attacks. 

The same colossal Gargantua who had that eating 
adventure with the six pilgrims, is made, in Rabelais's 
second book, to write his youthful son Pantagruel — 



40 Classic French Course in English. 

also a giant, but destined to be, when mature, a 
model of all princely virtues — a letter on education, 
in which the most pious paternal exhortation occurs. 
The whole letter reads like some learned Puritan 
divine's composition. Here are a few specimen 
sentences : — 

Fail not most carefully to peruse the books of the Greek, 
Arabian, and Latin physicians, not despising the Talinud- 
ists and Cabalists ; and by frequent anatomies get thee the 
perfect knowledge of that other world, called the microcosm; 
which is man. And at some of the hours of the day apply 
thy mind to the study of the Holy Scriptures : first, in Greek, 
the New Testament, with the Epistles of the Apostles ; and 
then the Old Testament in Hebrew. In brief, let me see thee 
an abyss and bottomless pit of knowledge. . . . 

... It behoveth thee to serve, to love, to fear God, and 
on him to cast all thy thoughts and all thy hope, and, hy 
faith formed in charity, to cleave unto him, so that thou 
mayst never be separated from him by thy sins. Suspect 
the abuses of the world. Set not thy heart upon vanity, for 
this life is transitory ; but the Word of the Lord endureth 
forever. 

" Friar John" is a mighty man of valor, who 
figures equivocally in the stor} 7 of Gargantua and 
Pantagruel. The Abbey of Theleme is given him in 
reward of his services. Some have identified this 
fighting monk with Martin Luther. The represen- 
tation is, on the whole, so conducted as to leave the 
reader's sympathies at least half enlisted in favor of 
the fellow, rough and roistering as he is. 

Panurge is the hero of the romance of Pantagruel, 
— almost more than Pantagruel himself. It would 



Rabelais. 41 

be unpardonable to dismiss Rabelais without first 
making our readers knowPanurge by, at least, a few 
traits of his character and conduct. Panurge was 
a shifty but unscrupulous adventurer, whom Pan- 
tagruel, pious prince as he was, coming upon him by 
chance, took and kept under his patronage. Panurge 
was an arch-imp of mischief, — mischief indulged in 
the form of obscene and malicious practical jokes. 
Rabelais describes his accomplishments in a long 
strain of discourse, from which we purge our selec- 
tion to follow, — thereby transforming Panurge into 
a comparatively proper and virtuous person : — 

He had threescore and three tricks to come by it 
[money] at his need, of which the most honorable and most 
ordinary was in manner of thieving, secret purloining, and 
filching, for he was a wicked, leWd rogue, a cozener, drinker, 
roysterer, rover, and a very dissolute and debauched fellow, 
if there were any in Paris ; otherwise, and in all matters else, 
the best and most virtuous man in the world ; and he was 
still contriving some plot, and devising mischief against the 
Serjeants and the watch. 

At one time he assembled three or four especial good 
hacksters and roaring boys; made them in the evening 
drink like Templars, afterwards led them till they came 
under St. Genevieve, or about the college of Xavarre, and, 
at the hour that the watch was coming up that way, — which 
he knew by putting his sword upon the pavement, and his 
ear by it, and, when he heard his sword shake, it was an 
infallible sign that the watch was near at that instant, — 
then he and his companions took a tumbrel or garbage-cart, 
and gave it the br angle, hurling it with all their force down 
the hill, and then ran away upon the other side; for in less 
than two days he knew all the streets, lanes, and turnings 
in Paris, as well as his Dens det. 



42 Classic French Course in English. 

At another time he laid, in some fair place where the 
said watch was to pass, a train of gunpowder, and, at the 
very instant that they went along, set fire to it, and then 
made himself sport to see what good grace they had in 
running away, thinking that St. Anthony's fire had caught 
them by the legs. ... In one of his pockets he had a great 
many little horns full of fleas and lice, which he borrowed 
from the beggars of St. Innocent, and cast them, with small 
canes or quills to write with, into the necks of the daintiest 
gentlewomen that he could find, yea, even in the church; 
for he never seated himself above in the choir, but always 
in the body of the church amongst the women, both at mass, 
at vespers, and at sermon. 

Coleridge, in his metaphysical way, keen at the 
moment on the scent of illustrations for the phi- 
losophy of Kant, said, " Pantagruel is the Reason ; 
Panurge the Understanding." Rabelais himself, in 
the fourth book of his romance, written in the last 
years of his life, defines the spirit of the work. 
This fourth book, the English translator says, is 
" justly thought his masterpiece." The same au- 
thority adds with enthusiasm, " Being wrote with 
more spirit, salt, and flame than the first part." 
Here, then, is Rabelais's own expression, sincere or 
jocular, as you choose to take it, for what consti- 
tutes the essence of his writing. We quote from 
the u Prologue " : — 

By the means of a little Pantagruelism (which, you 
know, is a certain jollity of mind, pickled in the scorn of 
fortune), you see me now [*' at near seventy years of age," 
his translator says], hale and cheery, as sound as a bell, and 
ready to drink, if you will. 



Rabelais. 43 

It is impossible to exaggerate the mad, rollicking 
humor, sticking at nothing, either in thought or in 
expression, with which especially this last book of 
Rabelais' s work is written. But we have no more 
space for quotation. 

Coleridge's theory of interpretation for Rabelais 's 
writings is hinted in his " Table Talk," as follows : 
" After any particularly deep thrust, . . . Rabelais, 
as if to break the blow, and to appear unconscious 
of what he has done, writes a chapter or two of 
pure buffoonery." 

The truth seems to us to be, that Rabelais's su- 
preme taste, like his supreme power, lay in the line 
of humorous satire. He hated monkery, and he 
satirized the system as openly as he dared, — this, 
however, not so much in the love of truth and free- 
dom, as in pure fondness for exercising his wit. 
That he was more than willing to make his ribald 
drollery the fool's mask from behind which he might 
aim safely his shafts of ridicule at what he despised 
and hated, is indeed probable. But in this is sup- 
plied to him no sufficient excuse for his obscene and 
blasphemous pleasantry. Nor yet are the manners 
of the age an excuse sufficient. Erasmus belonged 
to the same age, and he disliked the monks not less. 
But what a contrast, in point of decency, between 
Rabelais and Erasmus ! 



44 Classic French Course in English. 



IV. 

MONTAIGNE. 
1533-1592. 

Montaigne is signally the author of one book. 
His "Essays" are the whole of him. He wrote 
letters, to be sure, and he wrote journals of travel 
in quest of health and pleasure. But these are 
chiefly void of interest. Montaigne the Essayist 
alone is emphatically the Montaigne that survives. 
"Montaigne the Essayist," — that has become, as 
it were, a personal name in literary history. 

The "Essays" are one hundred and seven in 
number, divided into three books. They are very 
unequal in length ; and they are on the most various 
topics, — topics often the most whimsical in charac- 
ter. We give a few of his titles, taking them as 
found in Cotton's translation : — 

That men by various ways arrive at the same end; 
Whether the governor of a place ought himself to go out to 
parley; Of liars; Of quick or slow speech; A proceeding of 
some ambassadors; Yarious events from the same counsel; 
Of cannibals; That we laugh and cry from the same thing; 
Of smells; That the mind hinders itself; Of thumbs; Of 
virtue; Of coaches; Of managing the will; Of cripples; 
Of experience. 



Montaigne. 45 

Montaigne's titles cannot be trusted to indicate 
the nature of the essays to which they belong. The 
author's pen will not be bound. It runs on at its 
own pleasure. Things the most unexpected are in- 
cessantly turning up in Montaigne, — things, proba- 
bly, that were as unexpected to the writer when he 
was writing, as they will be to the reader when he 
is reading. The writing, on whatever topic, in 
whatever vein, always revolves around the writer 
for its pivot. Montaigne, from no matter what 
apparent diversion, may constantly be depended 
upon to bring up in due time at himself. The tether 
is long and elastic, but it is tenacious, and it is 
securely tied to Montaigne. This, as we shall pres- 
ently let the author himself make plain, is no acci- 
dent, of which Montaigne was unconscious. It is 
the express idea on which the " Essays " were writ- 
ten. Montaigne, in his u Essays," is a pure and 
perfect egotist, naked, and not ashamed. Egotism 
is Montaigne's note, his differentia, in the world of 
literature. Other literary men have been egotists 
— since. But Montaigne may be called the first, 
and he is the greatest. 

Montaigne was a Gascon, and Gasconisms adul- 
terate the purity of his French. But his style — a 
little archaic now, and never finished to the nail — 
had virtues of its own which have exercised a whole- 
some influence on classic French prose. It is sim- 
ple, direct, manly, genuine. It is fresh and racy of 
the writer. It is flexible to every turn, it is sensitive 



46 Classic French Course in English. 

to every rise or fall, of the thought. It is a stead- 
fast rebuke to raut and fustian. It quietly laughs 
to scorn the folly of that style which writhes, in an 
agony of expression, with neither thought nor feeling 
present to be expressed. Montaigne's "Essays" 
have been a great and a beneficent formative force 
in the development of prose style in French. 

For substance, Montaigne is rich in practical 
wisdom, his own by original reflection, or by dis- 
creet purveyal. He had read much, he had ob- 
served much, he had experienced much. The result 
of all, digested in brooding thought, he put into his 
" Essays." These grew as he grew. He got him- 
self transferred whole into them. Oat of them, in 
turn, the world has been busy ever since dissolving 
Montaigne. 

Montaigne's "Essays" are, as we have said, 
himself. Such is his own way of putting the fact. 
To one admiring his essays to him, he frankly re- 
plied, " You will like me, if you like my essays, for 
they are myself." The originality, the creative 
character and force, of the "Essays," lies in this 
autobiographical quality in them. Their fascina- 
tion, too, consists in the self-revelation they contain. 
This was, first, self-revelation on the part of the 
writer ; but no less it becomes, in each case, self- 
revelation in the experience of the reader. For, as 
face answereth to face in the glass, so doth the 
heart of man to man, — from race to race, and from 
generation to generation. If Montaigne, in his 



Montaigne. 47 

" Essays," held the mirror up to himself, he, in the 
same act, held up the mirror to you and to me. 
The image that we, reading, call Montaigne, is 
really ourselves. We never tire of gazing on it. 
We are all of us Narcissuses. This is why Mon- 
taigne is an immortal and a universal writer. 

Here is Montaigne's Preface to his u Essays;" 
" The Author to the Reader," it is entitled : — 

Reader, thou hast here an honest book; it doth at the 
outset forewarn thee that, in contriving the same, I have 
proposed to myself no other than a domestic and private 
end : I have had no consideration at all either to thy service 
or to my glory. My powers are not capable of any such de- 
sign. I have dedicated it to the particular commodity of 
my kinsfolk and friends, so that, having lost me (which 
they must do shortly), they may therein recover some traits 
of my conditions and humors, and by that means preserve 
more whole, and more life-like, the knowledge they had of 
me. Had my intention been to seek the world's favor, I 
should surely have adorned myself with borrowed beauties. 
I desire therein to be viewed as I appear in mine own genu- 
ine, simple, and ordinary manner, without study and artifice ; 
for it is myself I paint. My defects are therein to be read 
to the life, and my imperfections and my natural form, so 
far as public reverence hath permitted me. If I had lived 
among those nations which (they say) yet dwell under the 
sweet liberty of nature's primitive laws, I assure thee I 
would most willingly have painted myself quite fully, and 
quite naked. Thus, reader, myself am the matter of my 
book. There's no reason thou shouldst employ thy leisure 
about so frivolous and vain a subject. Therefore, farewell. 

From Montaigne, the 12th of June, 1580. 

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, our author, as the 



48 Classic French Course in English. 

foregoing date will have suggested, derived his most 
familiar name from the place at which he was born 
and at which he lived. Readers are not to take too 
literally Montaigne's notice of his dispensing with 
"borrowed beauties." He was, in fact, a famous 
borrower. He himself warns his readers to be care- 
ful how they criticise him ; they may be flouting 
unawares Seneca, Plutarch, or some other, equally 
redoubtable, of the reverend ancients. Montaigne 
is perhaps as signal an example as any in literature, 
of the man of genius exercising his prescriptive 
right to help himself to his own wherever he may 
happen to find it. But Montaigne has in turn been 
freely borrowed from. Bacon borrowed from him, 
Shakspeare borrowed from him, Dryden, Pope, 
Hume, Burke, Byron, — these, with many more, in 
England ; and, in France, Pascal, La Rochefou- 
cauld, Voltaire, Rousseau, — directly or indirectly, 
almost every writer since his day. No modern 
writer, perhaps, has gone in solution into subse- 
quent literature more widely than Montaigne. But 
no writer remains more solidly and insolubly entire. 
We go at once to chapter twenty-five of the first 
book of the "Essays," entitled, in the English 
translation, " Of the education of children." The 
translation we use henceforth throughout is the 
classic one of Charles Cotton, in a text of it edited 
by Mr. William Carew Hazlitt. The "preface," 
already given, Cotton omitted to translate. We 
have allowed Mr. Hazlitt to supply the deficiency. 



Montaigne. 49 

Montaigne addresses his educational views to a 
countess. Several others of his essays are similarly 
inscribed to women. Mr. Emerson's excuse of 
Montaigne for his coarseness, — that he wrote for a 
generation in which women were not expected to be 
readers, — is thus seen to be curiously impertinent 
to the actual case that existed. Of a far worse 
fault in Montaigne than his coarseness, — we mean 
his outright immorality, — Mr. Emerson makes no 
mention, and for it, therefore, provides no excuse. 
We shall ourselves, in due time, deal more openly 
with our readers on this point. 

It was for a ; *boy of quality" that Montaigne 
aimed to adapt his suggestions on the subject of 
education. In this happy country of ours, all boys 
are boys of quality ; and we shall go nowhere amiss 
in selecting from the present essay : — 

For a boy of quality, then, I say, I would also have his 
friends solicitous to find him out a tutor who has rather a 
well-made than a well-filled head, seeking, indeed, both the 
one and the other, but rather of the two to prefer manners 
and judgment to mere learning, and that this man should 
exercise his charge after a new method. 

'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thunder- 
ing in their pupil's ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, 
whilst the business of the pupil is only to repeat what the 
others have said: now, I would have a tutor to correct this 
error, and that, at the very first, he should, according to the 
capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test, permitting 
his pupil himself to taste things, and of himself to discern 
and choose them, sometimes opening the way to him, anil 
sometimes leaving him to open it for himself; that is, I 



50 Classic French Course in English. 

would not have him alone to invent and speak, but that he 
should also hear his pupil speak in turn. . . . Let him 
make him put what he has learned into a hundred several 
forms, and accommodate it to so many several subjects, to 
see if he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his 
own. . . . 'Tis a sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge 
what we eat in the same condition it was swallowed: the 
stomach has not performed its office, unless it have altered 
the form and condition of what was committed to it to con- 
coct. . . . 

Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift every 
thing he reads, and lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple 
authority and upon trust. Aristotle' s principles will then be 
no more principles to him than those of Epicurus and the 
Stoics: let this diversity of opinions be propounded to, and 
laid before, him; he will himself choose, if he be able; if 
not, he will remain in doubt. 

" Che, non men che saper, dubbiar m'aggrata." 

Dante, Inferno, xl. 93. 

[" That doubting pleases me, not less than knowing." 

Longfellow's Translation.'] 

For, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by 
his own reason, they will no more be theirs, but become his 
own. Who follows another, follows nothing, finds nothing, 
nay, is inquisitive after nothing. "Non sumus sub rege; 
sibi quisque se vindicet." ["We are under no king; let each 
look to himself."— Seneca, Ep. 33.] Let him, at least, 
know that he knows. It will be necessary that he imbibe 
their knowledge, not that he be corrupted with their pre- 
cepts; and no matter if he forget where he had his learning, 
provided he know how to apply it to his own use. Truth 
and reason are common to every one, and are no more his 
who spake them first, than his who speaks them after; 'tis 
no more according to Plato, than according to me, since 
both he and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull 



Montaigne. 51 

their several sweets from this flower and that blossom, here 
and there where they find them ; but themselves afterward 
make the honey, which is all and purely their own, and no 
more thyme and marjoram: so the several fragments he 
borrows from others he will transform and shuffle together, 
to compile a work that shall be absolutely his own ; that is to 
say, his judgment: his instruction, labor, and study tend 
to nothing else but to form that. . . . Conversation with 
men is of very great use, and travel into foreign countries ; 
... to be able chiefly to give an account of the humors, 
manners, customs, and laws of those nations where he has 
been, and that we may whet and sharpen our wits by rub- 
bing them against those of others. . . . 

In this conversing with men, I mean also, and princi- 
pally, those who live only in the records of history: he 
shall, by reading those books, converse with the great and 
heroic souls of the best ages. 

It is difficult to find a stopping-place in discourse 
so wise and so sweet. We come upon sentences 
like Plato for height and for beauty. An example : 
"The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual 
cheerfulness ; her state is like that of things in the 
regions above the moon, always clear and serene." 
But the genius of Montaigne does not often soar, 
though even one little flight like that shows that it 
has wings. Montaigne's garnishes of quotation 
from foreign tongues are often a cold-blooded de- 
vice of afterthought with him. His first edition 
was without them, in many places where subse- 
quently they appear. Readers familiar with Emer- 
son will be reminded of him in perusing Montaigne. 
Emerson himself said, "It seemed to me [in read- 



52 Classic French Course in English. 

ing the "Essays " of Montaigne] as if I had myself 
written the book in some former life, so sincerely it 
spoke to my thoughts and experience." The rich 
old English of Cotton's translation had evidently a 
strong influence on Emerson, to mould his own style 
of expression. Emerson's trick of writing " 'tis," 
was apparently caught from Cotton. The following 
sentence, from the present essay of Montaigne, 
might very well have served Mr. Emerson for his 
own rule of writing: " Let it go before, or come 
after, a good sentence, or a thing well said, is 
always in season ; if it neither suit well with what 
went before, nor has much coherence with what fol- 
lows after, it is good in itself." Montaigne, at any 
rate, wrote his " Essays" on that easy principle. 
The logic of them is the logic of mere chance asso- 
ciation in thought. But, with Montaigne, — what- 
ever is true of Emerson, — the association at least 
is not occult ; and it is such as pleases the reader, 
not less than it pleased the writer. So this Gascon 
gentleman of the olden time never tires us, and 
never loses us out of his hand. We go with him 
cheerfully where he so blithely leads. 

Montaigne tells us how he was himself trained 
under his father. The elder Montaigne, too, had his 
ideas on education, — the subject which his son, in 
this essay, so instructively treats. The essayist leads 
up to his autobiographical episode by an allusion to 
the value of the classical languages, and to the ques- 
tion of method in studying them. He says : — 



Montaigne. 53 

In my infancy, and before I began to speak, he [my father] 
committed me to the care of a German, . . . totally ignorant 
of onr language, but very fluent, and a great critic, in Latin. 
This man, whom he had fetched out of his own country, and 
whom he entertained with a very great salary, for this only 
end, had me continually with him: to him there were also 
joined two others, of inferior learning, to attend me, and to 
relieve him, who all of them spoke to me in no other lan- 
guage but Latin. As to the rest of his family, it was an 
inviolable rule, that neither himself nor my mother, man 
nor maid, should speak any thing in my company, but such 
Latin words as every one had learned only to gabble with 
me. It is not to be imagined how great an advantage this 
proved to the whole family : my father and my mother by 
this means learned Latin enough to understand it perfectly 
well, and to speak it to such a degree as was sufficient for 
any necessary use. as also those of the servants did, who 
were most frequently with me. In short, we Latined it at 
such a rate, that it overflowed to all the neighboring villages, 
where there yet remain, that have established themselves 
by custom, several Latin appellations of arusans and their 
tools. As for what concerns myself, I was above six years 
of age before I understood either French or Perigordin 
["Perigordin" is Montaigne's name for the dialect of his 
province, Perigord (Gascony)], anymore than Arabic; and, 
without art. book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or the 
expense of a tear, I had, by that time, learned to speak as 
pure Latin as my master himself, for I had no means of 
mixing it up with any other. 

We are now to see how. helped by his wealth, the 
father was able to gratify a pleasant whimsey of his 
own in the nurture of his boy. Highly aesthetic was 
the matin reveille that broke the slumbers of this 
hopeful young heir of 3Iontaigne : — 



54 Classic French Course in English. 

Some being of opinion that it troubles and disturbs the 
brains of children suddenly to wake them in the morning, 
and to snatch them violently and over-hastily from sleep, 
wherein they are much more profoundly involved than we, 
he [the father] caused me to be wakened by the sound of 
some musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a 
musician for that purpose. . . . The good man, being ex- 
tremely timorous of any way failing in a thing he had so 
wholly set his heart upon, suffered himself at last to be 
overruled by the common opinions : ... he sent me, at six 
years of age, to the College of Guienne, at that time the 
best and most nourishing in France. 

In short, as in the case of Mr. Tulliver, the world 
was u too many" for Eyquem p&re; and, in the 
education of his son, the stout Gascon, having 
started out well as dissenter, fell into dull con- 
formity at last. 

We ought to give some idea of the odd instances, 
classic and other, with which Montaigne plentifully 
bestrews his pages. He is writing of the " Force 
of Imagination." He says : — 

A woman, fancying she had swallowed a pin in a piece 
of bread, cried and lamented as though she had an intoler- 
able pain in her throat, where she thought she felt it stick; 
but an ingenious fellow that was brought to her, seeing no 
outward tumor nor alteration, supposing it to be only a con- 
ceit taken at some crust of bread that had hurt her as it 
went down, caused her to vomit, and, unseen, threw a 
crooked pin into the basin, which the woman no sooner 
saw, but, believing she had cast it up, she presently found 
herself eased of her pain. . . . 

Such as are addicted to the pleasures of the field, have, 



Montaigne. 55 

I make no question, heard the story of the falconer, who, 
having earnestly fixed his eyes upon a kite in the air, laid a 
wager that he would bring her down with the sole power of 
his sight, and did so, as it was said ; for the tales I borrow, 
I charge upon the consciences of those from whom I have 
them. 

We italicize the last foregoing words, to make 
readers see that Montaigne is not to be read for the 
truth of his instances. He uses what comes to 
hand. He takes no trouble to verify. "The dis- 
courses are my own," he says ; but even this, as 
we have hinted, must not be pressed too hard in 
interpretation. Whether a given reflection of Mon- 
taigne's is strictly his own, in the sense of not 
having been first another's, who gave it to him, is 
not to be determined except upon very wide read- 
ing, very well remembered, in all the books that 
Montaigne could have got under his eye. That was 
full fairly his own, he thought, which he had made 
his own by intelligent appropriation. And this, 
perhaps, expresses in general the sound law of 
property in the realm of mind. At any rate, Mon- 
taigne will wear no yoke of fast obligation. He 
will write as pleases him. Above all things else, he 
likes his freedom. 

Here is one of those sagacious historical scep- 
ticisms, in which Montaigne was so fond of poising 
his mind between opposite views. It occurs in his 
essay entitled, " Of the Uncertainty of our Judg- 
ments." 



56 Classic French Course in JEnglish. 

Amongst other oversights Pompey is charged withal at 
the battle of Pharsalia, he is condemned for making his 
army stand still to receive the enemy's charge, " by reason 
that" (I shall here steal Plutarch's own words, which are 
better than mine) "he by so doing deprived himself of the 
violent impression the motion of running adds to the first 
shock of arms, and hindered that clashing of the combatants 
against one another, which is wont to give them greater im- 
petuosity and fury, especially when they come to rush in 
with their utmost vigor, their courages increasing by the 
shouts and the career; 'tis to render the soldiers' ardor, as a 
man may say, more reserved and cold." This is what he 
says. But, if Caesar had come by the worse, why might it 
not as well have been urged by another, that, on the con- 
trary, the strongest and most steady posture of fighting is 
that wherein a man stands planted firm, without motion; 
and that they who are steady upon the march, closing up, 
and reserving their force within themselves for the push of 
the business, have a great advantage against those who are 
disordered, and who have already spent half their breath in 
running on precipitately to the charge? Besides that, an 
army is a body made up of so many individual members, it 
is impossible for it to move in this fury with so exact a 
motion as not to break the order of battle, and that the best 
of them are not engaged before their fellows can come on 
to help them. 

The sententiousness of Montaigne may be illus- 
trated by transferring here a page of brief excerpts 
from the " Essays," collected by Mr. Bayle St. John 
in his biography of the author. This apothegmatic 
or proverbial quality in Montaigne had a very impor- 
tant sequel of fruitful influence on subsequent French 
writers, as chapters to follow in this volume will 
abundantly show.' In reading the sentences sub- 



Montaigne. 57 

joined, you will have the sensation of coming sud- 
denly upon a treasure-trove of coined proverbial 
wisdom : — 



Our minds are never at home, but ever beyond home. 

I will take care, if possible, that my death shall say noth- 
ing that my life has not said. 

Life in itself is neither good nor bad: it is the place of 
what is good or bad. 

Knowledge should not be stuck on to the mind, but incor- 
porated in it. 

Irresolution seems to me the most common and apparent 
vice of our nature. 

Age wrinkles the mind more than the face. 

Habit is a second nature. 

Hunger cures love. 

It is easier to get money than to keep it. 

Anger has often been the vehicle of courage. 

It is more difficult to command than to obey. 

A liar should have a good memory. 

Ambition is the daughter of presumption. 

To serve a prince, you must be discreet and a liar. 

We learn to live when life has passed. 

The mind is ill at ease when its companion has the colic. 

We are all richer than we think, but we are brought up 
to go a-begging. 

The greatest masterpiece of man is ... to be born at 
the right time. 



58 Classic French Course in English. 

We append a saying of Montaigne's not found 
in Mr. St. John's collection : — 

There is no so good man who so squares all his thoughts 
and actions to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to 
deserve hanging ten times in his life. 

Montaigne was too intensely an egotist, in his 
character as man no less than in his character as 
writer, to have many personal relations that exhibit 
him in aspects , engaging to our love. But one 
friendship of his is memorable, — is even historic. 
The name of La Boetie is forever associated with 
the name of Montaigne. La Boetie is remarkable 
for being, as we suppose, absolutely the first voice 
raised in France against the idea of monarchy. His 
little treatise " Contr' Un " (literally, " Against 
One"), or "Voluntary Servitude," is by many 
esteemed among the most important literary pro- 
ductions of modern times. Others, again, Mr. 
George Saintsbury for example, consider it an 
absurdly overrated book. For our own part, 
we are inclined to give it conspicuous place in 
the history of free thought in France. La Boetie 
died young; and his " Contr' Un" was published 
posthumously, — first by the Protestants, after 
the terrible day of St. Bartholomew. Our readers 
may judge for themselves whether a pamphlet in 
which such passages as the following could occur, 
must not have had an historic effect upon the inflam- 
mable sentiment of the French people. We take 



Montaigne. 59 

Mr. Bayle St. John's translation, bracketing a hint 
or two of correction suggested by comparison of the 
original French. The treatise of La Boetie is some- 
times now printed with Montaigne's "Essays," in 
French editions of our author's works : La Boetie 
says : — 

You sow your fruits [crops] that he [the king] may rav- 
age them ; you furnish and fill your houses that he may have 
something to steal ; you bring up your daughters that he may 
slake his luxury; you bring up your sons that he may take 
them to be butchered in his wars, to be the ministers of his 
avarice, the executors of his vengeance; you disfigure your 
forms by labor [your own selves you inure to toil] that he 
may cocker himself in delight, and wallow in nasty and 
disgusting pleasure. 

Montaigne seems really to have loved this friend 
of his, whom he reckoned the greatest man in France. 
His account of La Boetie' s death is boldly, and not 
presumptuously, paralleled by Mr. St. John with the 
" Phaedon " of Plato. Noble writing, it certainly is, 
though its stateliness is a shade too self-conscious, 
perhaps. 

We have thus far presented Montaigne in words 
of his own such as may fairly be supposed likely to 
prepossess the reader in his favor. We could mul- 
tiply our extracts indefinitely in a like unexception- 
able vein of writing. But to do so, and to stop 
with these, would misrepresent Montaigne. Mon- 
taigne is very far from being an innocent writer. 
His moral tone generally is low, and often it is 



60 Classic French Course in English. 

execrable. He is coarse, but coarseness is not the 
worst of him. Indeed, he is cleanliness itself com- 
pared with Rabelais. But Rabelais is morality itself 
compared with Montaigne. Montaigne is corrupt 
and corrupting. This feature of his writings, we 
are necessarily forbidden to illustrate. In an essay 
written in his old age, — which we will not even 
name, its general tenor is so evil, — Montaigne holds 
the following language : — 

I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy 
and cloudy sky I have before me, which, thanks be to God, 
I regard without fear, but not without meditation and 
study, and amuse myself in the remembrance of my better 
years : — 

" Animus quod perdidit, optat, 
Atque in prseterita se totus imagine versat." 

Petronius, c. 128. 

["The mind desires what it has lost, and in fancy flings 
itself wholly into the past."] 

Let childhood look forward, and age backward: is not 
this the signification of Janus' double face ? Let years 
haul me along if they will, but it shall be backward; as long 
as my eyes can discern the pleasant season expired, I shall 
now and then turn them that way; though it escape from 
my blood and veins, I shall not, however, root the image of 
it out of my memory : — 

" Hoc est 
Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui." 

Martial, x. 23, 7. 

[" 'Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy former life again."] 
Harmlessly, even engagingly, pensive seems the 



Montaigne. 61 

foregoing strain of sentiment. Who could suppose 
it a prelude to detailed reminiscence on the author's 
part of sensual pleasures — the basest — enjoyed in 
the past? The venerable voluptuary keeps himself 
in countenance for his lascivious vein, by writing as 
follows : — 

I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to 
do; even thoughts that are not to be published, displease 
me; the worst of my actions and qualities do not appear to 
me so evil, as I find it evil and base not to dare to own 
them. . . . 

... I am greedy of making myself known, and I care 
not to how many, provided it be truly. . . . Many things 
that I would not say to a particular individual, I say to the 
people ; and, as to my most secret thoughts, send my most 
intimate friends to my book. . . . For my part, if any one 
should recommend me as a good pilot, as being very modest, 
or very chaste, I should owe him no thanks [because the 
recommendation would be false]. 

We must leave it — as, however, Montaigne him- 
self is far enough from leaving it — to the imagina- 

o o o 

tion of readers to conjecture what " pleasures " they 
are, of which this worn-out debauchee (nearing 
death, and thanking God that he nears it " with- 
out fear ") speaks in the following sentimental 
strain : — 

In farewells, we oftener than not heat our affections 
towards the things we take leave of : I take my last leave of 
the pleasures of this world; these are our last embraces. 

Mr. Emerson, in his ' ; Representative Men," 



62 Classic French Course in English. 

makes Montaigne stand for The Sceptic. Sceptic 
Montaigne was. He questioned, he considered, he 
doubted. He stood poised in equilibrium, in indif- 
ference, between contrary opinions. He saw rea- 
sons on this side, but he saw reasons also on that, 
and he did not clear his mind. " Que sgai-je?" 
was his motto (" What knowl?"), a question as 
of hopeless ignorance, — nay, as of ignorance also 
void of desire to know. His life was one long in- 
terrogation, a balancing of opposites, to the end. 

Such, speculatively, was Montaigne. Such, too, 
speculatively, was Pascal. The difference, however, 
was greater than the likeness, between these two 
minds. Pascal, doubting, gave the world of spir- 
itual things the benefit of his doubt. Montaigne, 
on the other hand, gave the benefit of his doubt to 
the world of sense. He was a sensualist, he was a 
glutton, he was a lecher. He, for his portion, chose 
the good things of this life. His body he used to 
get him pleasures of the body. In pleasures of the 
body he sunk and drowned his conscience, — if he 
ever had a conscience. But his intelligence sur- 
vived. He became, at last, — if he was not such 
from the first, — almost pure sense, without soul. 

Yet we have no doubt Montaigne was an agree- 
able gentleman. We think we should have got on 
well with him as a neighbor of ours. He was a 
tolerably decent father, provided the child were 
grown old enough to be company for him. His 
own lawful children, while infants, had to go out 



Montaigne. 63 

of the house for their nursing ; so it not unnaturally 
happened that all but one died in their infancy. 
Five of such is the number that you can count in 
his own journalistic entries of family births and 
deaths. But, speaking as " moral philosopher," in 
his " Essays," he says, carelessly, that he had lost 
" two or three" u without repining." This, per- 
haps, is affectation. But what affectation ! 

Montaigne was well-to-do ; and he ranked as a 
gentleman, if not as a great nobleman. He lived 
in a castle, bequeathed to him, and by him be- 
queathed, — a castle still standing, and full of per- 
sonal association with its most famous owner. He 
occupied a room in the tower, fitted up as a library. 
Over the door of this room may still, we believe, be 
read Montaigne's motto, " Que sgal-je? " Votaries 
of Montaigne perform their pious pilgrimages to 
this shrine of their idolatry, year after year, cen- 
tury after century. 

For, remember, it is now three centuries since 
Montaigne wrote. He was before Bacon and 
Shakspeare. He was contemporary with Charles 
IX., and with Henry of Navarre. But date has 
little to do with such a writer as Montaigne. His 
quality is sempiternal. He overlies the ages, as 
the long hulk of ' ' The Great Eastern ' ' overlay the 
waves of the sea, stretching from summit to sum- 
mit. Not that, in the form of his literary work, he 
was altogether independent of time and of circum- 
stance. Not that he was uninfluenced by his his- 



64 Classic French Course in English. 

toric place, in the essential spirit of his work. But, 
more than often happens, Montaigne may fairly be 
judged out of himself alone. His message he 
might, indeed, have delivered differently ; but it 
would have been substantially the same message if 
he had been differently placed in the world, and in 
history. We need hardly, therefore, add any thing 
about Montaigne's outward life. His true life is in 
his book. 

Montaigne the Essayist is the consummate, the 
ideal, expression, practically incapable of improve- 
ment, of the spirit and wisdom of the world. This 
characterization, we think, fairly and sufficiently 
sums up the good and the bad of Montaigne. We 
might seem to describe no very mischievous thing. 
But to have the spirit and wisdom of this world 
expressed, to have it expressed as in a last authori- 
tative form, a form to commend it, to flatter it, to 
justify it, to make it seem sufficient, to erect it into 
a kind of gospel, — that means much. It means 
hardly less than to provide the world with a new 
Bible, — a Bible of the world's own, a Bible that 
shall approve itself as better than the Bible of the 
Old and New Testaments. Montaigne's " Essays" 
constitute, in effect, such a book. The man of the 
world may, — and, to say truth, does, — in this vol- 
ume, find all his needed texts. Here is viaticum — 
daily manna — for him, to last the year round, and 
to last year after year ; an inexhaustible breviary 
for the church of this world ! It is of the gravest 



Montaigne. 65 

historical significance that Rabelais and Montaigne, 
but especially Montaigne, should, to such an extent, 
for now three full centuries, have been furnishing 
the daily intellectual food of Frenchmen. 

Pascal, in an interview with M. de Saci (care- 
fully reported by the latter) , in which the conversa- 
tion was on the subject of Montaigne and Epictetus 
contrasted, — these two authors Pascal acknowl- 
edged to be the ones most constantly in his hand, 
— said gently of Montaigne, "Montaigne is abso- 
lutely pernicious to those who have any inclination 
toward irreligion, or toward vicious indulgences.' ' 
We, for our part, are prepared, speaking more 
broadly than Pascal, to say that, to a somewhat 
numerous class of naturally dominant minds, Mon- 
taigne's " Essays," in spite of all that there is good 
in them, — nay, greatly because of so much good in 
them, — are, by their subtly insidious persuasion to 
evil, upon the whole quite the most powerfully 
pernicious book known to us in literature, either 
ancient or modern. 






66 Classic French Course in English. 



LA ROCHEFOUCAULD : 1613-1680 (La Bruyere: 
1646 (?)-1696 ; Vauvenargues : 1715-1747). 

In La Rochefoucauld we meet another eminent 
example of the author of one book. "Letters," 
"Memoirs," and " Maxims " indeed name produc- 
tions in three kinds, productions all of them notable, 
and all still extant, from La Rochefoucauld's pen. 
But the " Maxims " are so much more famous than 
either the " Letters " or the " Memoirs," that their 
author may be said to be known only by those. If 
it were not for the " Maxims," the " Letters " and 
the " Memoirs " would probably now be forgotten. 
We here may dismiss these from our minds, and con- 
centrate our attention exclusively upon the "Max- 
ims." Voltaire said, "The 'Memoirs' of the Due 
de La Rochefoucauld are read, but we know his 
4 Maxims ' by heart." 

La Rochefoucauld's " Maxims " are detached sen- 
tences of reflection and wisdom on human character 
and conduct. They are about seven hundred in 
number, but they are all comprised in a very small 
volume ; for they generally are each only two or 
three lines in length, and almost never does a single 
maxim occupy more than the half of a moderate- 
sized page. The " Maxims," detached, as we have 



La Rochefoucauld. 67 

described them, have no very marked logical se- 
quence in the order in which they stand. They all, 
however, have a profound mutual relation. An 
unvarying monotone of sentiment, in fact, runs 
through them. They are so many different expres- 
sions, answering to so many different observations 
taken at different angles, of one and the same per- 
sisting estimate of human nature. ' Self-love is 
the mainspring and motive of every thing we dD, or 
say, or feel, or think : ' that is the total result of 
the " Maxims " of La Rochefoucauld. 

The writer's qualifications for treating his theme 
were unsurpassed. He had himself the right char- 
acter, moral and intellectual ; his scheme of conduct 
in life corresponded ; he wrote in the right language, 
French ; and he was rightly situated in time, in place, 
and in circumstance. He needed but to look closely 
within him and without him, — which he was gifted 
with eyes to do, — and then report what he saw, in 
the language to which he was born. This he did, 
and his " Maxims " are the fruit. His method was 
largely the sceptical method of Montaigne. His 
result, too, was much the same result as his master's. 
But the pupil surpassed the master in the quality of 
his work. There is a fineness, an exquisiteness, in 
the literary form of La Rochefoucauld, which Mon- 
taigne might indeed have disdained to seek, but 
which he could never, even with seeking, have 
attained. Each maxim of La Rochefoucauld is a 
"gem of purest ray serene," wrought to the last 



68 Classic French Course in English. 

degree of perfection in form with infinite artistic 
pains. Purity, precision, clearness, density, point, 
are perfectly reconciled in La Rochefoucauld's style 
with ease, grace, and brilliancy of expression. The 
influence of such literary finish, well bestowed on 
thought worthy to receive it, has been incalculably 
potent in raising the standard of French production 
in prose. It was Voltaire's testimony, " One of 
the works which has most contributed to form the 
national taste, and give it a spirit of accuracy and 
precision, was the little collection of ' Maxims ' by 
Francois Due de La Rochefoucauld.' ' 

There is a high-bred air about La Rochefoucauld 
the writer, which well accords with the rank and 
character of the man La Rochefoucauld. He was 
of one of the noblest families in France. His 
instincts were all aristocratic. His manners and his 
morals were those of his class. Brave, spirited, a 
touch of chivalry in him, honorable and amiable as 
the world reckons of its own, La Rochefoucauld ran 
a career consistent throughout with his own master- 
principle, self-love. He had a wife whose conjugal 
fidelity her husband seems to have thought a suffi- 
cient supply in that virtue for both himself and her. 
He behaved himself accordingly. His illicit rela- 
tions with other women were notorious. But they 
unhappily did not make La Rochefoucauld in that 
respect at all peculiar among the distinguished 
men of his time. His brilliant female friends col- 
laborated with him in working out his "Maxims." 



La Rochefoucauld. 69 

These were the labor of years. They were pub- 
lished in successive editions, during the lifetime of 
the author ; and some final maxims were added from 
his manuscripts after his death. 

Using, for the purpose, a very recent translation, 
that of A. S. Bolton (which, in one or two places, 
we venture to conform more exactly to the sense of 
the original) , we give almost at hazard a few speci- 
mens of these celebrated apothegms. We adopt 
the numbering given in the best Paris edition of the 
"Maxims: " — 

ISTo. 11. The passions often beget their contraries. Ava- 
rice sometimes produces prodigality, and prodigality avarice: 
we are often firm from weakness, and daring from timidity. 

No. 13. Our self-love bears more impatiently the con- 
demnation of our tastes than of our opinions. 

How much just detraction from all mere natural 
human greatness is contained in the following pene- 
trative maxim ! — 

No. 18. Moderation is a fear of falling into the envy and 
contempt which those deserve who are intoxicated with their 
good fortune; it is a vain parade of the strength of our mind ; 
and, in short, the moderation of men in their highest eleva- 
tion is a desire to appear greater than their fortune. 

What effectively quiet satire in these few words ! — 

No. 19. We have strength enough to bear the ills of 
others. 

This man had seen the end of all perfection in the 
apparently great of this world. He could not bear 



70 Classic French Course in English. 

that such should flaunt a false plume before their 
fellows : — 

No. 20. The steadfastness of sages is only the art of 
locking up their uneasiness in their hearts. 

Of course, had it lain in the author's chosen line 
to do so, he might, with as much apparent truth, 
have pointed out, that to lock up uneasiness in the 
heart requires steadfastness no less — nay, more — 
than not to feel uneasiness. 

The inflation of " philosophy * ' vaunting itself is 
thus softly eased of its painful distention : — 

No. 22. Philosophy triumphs easily over troubles passed 
and troubles to come, but present troubles triumph over 
it. 

When Jesus once rebuked the fellow-disciples of 
James and John for blaming those brethren as self- 
seekers, he acted on the same profound principle 
with that disclosed in the following maxim : — 

No. 34. If we had no pride, we should not complain of 
that of others. 

How impossible it is for that Proteus, self-love, to 
elude the presence of mind, the inexorable eye, the 
fast hand, of this incredulous Frenchman : — 

No. 39. Interest [self-love] speaks all sorts of languages, 
and plays all sorts of parts, even that of disinterestedness. 

No. 49. We are never so happy, or so unhappy, as we 
imagine. 

No. 78. The love of justice is, in most men, only the fear 
of suffering injustice. 



La Rochefoucauld. 71 

What a subtly unsoldering distrust the following 
maxim introduces into the sentiment of mutual 
friendship ! — 

No. 83. What men have called friendship, is only a 
partnership, a mutual accommodation of interests, and an 
exchange of good offices : it is, in short, only a traffic, in 
which self-love always proposes to gain something. 

No. 89o Every one complains of his memory, and no one 
complains of his judgment. 

How striking, from its artful suppression of strik- 
ingness, is the first following, and what a wide, 
easy sweep of well-bred satire it contains ! — 

No. 93. Old men like to give good advice, to console them- 
selves for being no longer able to give bad examples. 

No. 119. We are so much accustomed to disguise our- 
selves to others, that, at last, we disguise ourselves to 
ourselves. 

No. 127. The true way to be deceived, is to think one's 
self sharper than others. 

The plain-spoken proverb, "A man that is his 
own lawyer, has a fool for his client," finds a more 
polished expression in the following : — 

No. 132. It is easier to be wise for others, than to be so 
for one's self. 

How pitilessly this inquisitor pursues his pre} r , 
the human soul, into all its useless hiding-places ! — 

Xo. 138. We would rather speak ill of ourselves, than not 
talk of ourselves. 



72 Classic French Course in English. 

The following maxim, longer and less felici- 
tously phrased than is usual with La Rochefou- 
cauld, recalls that bitter definition of the bore, — 
" One who insists on talking about himself all the 
time that you are wishing to talk about your- 
self:"— 

No. 139. One of the causes why we find so few people 
who appear reasonable and agreeable in conversation, is, 
that there is scarcely any one who does not think more of 
what he wishes to say, than of replying exactly to what is 
said to him. The cleverest and the most compliant think it 
enough to show an attentive air; while we see in their eyes 
and in their mind a wandering from what is said to them, 
and a hurry to return to what they wish to say, instead of 
considering that it is a bad way to please or to persuade 
others, to try so hard to please one's self, and that to listen 
well is one of the greatest accomplishments we can have in 
conversation. 

If we are indignant at the maxims following, it is 
probably rather because they are partly true than 
because they are wholly false : — 

No. 144. We are not fond of praising, and, without inter- 
est, we never praise any one. Praise is a cunning flattery, 
hidden and delicate, which, in different ways, pleases him 
who gives and him who receives it. The one takes it as a 
reward for his merit : the other gives it to show his equity 
and his discernment. 

No. 146. We praise generally only to be praised. 

No. 147. Few are wise enough to prefer wholesome blame 
to treacherous praise. 

No. 149. Disclaiming praise is a wish to be praised a 
second time. 



La Rochefoucauld. 73 

Xo. 152. If we did not flatter ourselves, the flattery of 
others could not hurt us. 

No. 184. We acknowledge our faults in order to atone, 
by our sincerity, for the harm they do us in the minds of 
others. 

No. 199. The desire to appear able often prevents our 
becoming so. 

No. 201. Whoever thinks he can do without the world, 
deceives himself much; but whoever thinks the world can- 
not do without him, deceives himself much more. 

With the following, contrast Kuskin's noble para- 
dox, that the soldier's business, rightly conceived, 
is self-sacrifice ; his ideal purpose being, not to kill, 
but to be killed : — 

Xo. 214. Yalor, in private soldiers, is a perilous calling, 
which they have taken to in order to gain their living. 

Here is, perhaps, the most current of all La 
Kochefoucauld's maxims : — 

Xo. 218. Hypocrisy is a homage which vice renders to 
virtue. 

Of the foregoing maxim, it may justly be said, 
that its truth and point depend upon the assump- 
tion, implicit, that there is such a thing as virtue, 
— an assumption which the whole tenor of the 
44 Maxims,'' in general, contradicts. 

How incisive the following ! — 

Xo. 226. Too great eagerness to requite an obligation is 
a kind of ingratitude. 

Xo. 298. The gratitude of most men is only a secret desire 
to receive greater favors. 



74 Classic French Course in English. 

No. 304. We often forgive those who bore us, but we 
cannot forgive those whom we bore. 

No. 313. Why should we have memory enough to retain 
even the smallest particulars of what has happened to us, 
and yet not have enough to remember how often we have 
told them to the same individual ? 

The first following maxim satirizes both princes 
and courtiers. It might be entitled, " How to in- 
sult a prince, and not suffer for your temerity " : — 

No. 320. To praise princes for virtues they have not, is 
to insult them with impunity. 

No. 347. We find few sensible people, except those who 
are of our way of thinking. 

No. 409. We should often be ashamed of our best actions, 
if the world saw the motives which cause them. 

No. 424. We boast of faults the reverse of those we have : 
when we are weak, we boast of being stubborn. 

Here, at length, is a maxim that does not depress, 
— that animates you : — 

No. 432. To praise noble actions heartily, is in some sort 
to take part in them. 

The following is much less exhilarating : — 

No. 454. There are few instances in which we should 
make a bad bargain, by giving up the good that is said of us, 
on condition that nothing bad be said. 

This, also : — 

No. 458. Our enemies come nearer to the truth, in the 
opinions they form of us, than we do ourselves. 

Here is a celebrated maxim, vainly " suppressed " 
by the author, after first publication : — 



La Rochefoucauld. 75 

No. 583. In the adversity of our best friends, we always 
find something which does not displease us." 

Before La Rochefoucauld, Montaigne had said, 
"Even in the midst of compassion, we feel within us 
an unaccountable bitter-sweet titillation of ill-natured 
pleasure in seeing another suffer;" and Burke, 
after both, wrote (in his " Sublime and Beautiful ") 
with a heavier hand, " I am convinced that we have 
a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the 
real misfortunes and pains of others." 

La Rochefoucauld is not fairly cynical, more than 
is Montaigne. But, as a man, he wins upon you 
less. His maxims are like hard and sharp crystals, 
precipitated from the worldly wisdom blandly solute 
and dilute in Montaigne. 

The wise of this world reject the dogma of human 
depravity, as taught in the Bible. They willingly 
accept it, — nay, accept it complacently, hugging 
themselves for their own penetration, — as taught 
in the " Maxims " of La Rochefoucauld. 

Jean de La Bruyere is personally almost as little 
known as if he were an ancient of the Greek or 
Roman world, surviving, like Juvenal, only in his 
literary production. Bossuet got him employed to 
teach history to a great duke, who became his 
patron, and settled a life-long annuity upon him. 
He published his one book, the " Characters," in 
1687, was made member of the French Academy in 



76 Classic French Course in English. 

1693, and died in 1696. That, in short, is La 
Bruyere' s biograph} 7 . 

His book is universally considered one of the most 
finished products of the human mind. It is not a 
great work, — it lacks the unity and the majesty of 
design necessary for that. It consists simply of de- 
tached thoughts and observations on a variety of 
subjects. It shows the author to have been a man 
of deep and wise reflection, but especially a con- 
summate master of style. The book is one to read 
in, rather than to read. It is full of food to thought. 
The very beginning exhibits a self-consciousness on 
the writer's part very different from that spontaneous 
simplicity in which truly great books originate. La 
Bruyere begins : — 

Every thing has been said; and one comes too late, after 
more than seven thousand years that there have been men, 
and men who have thought. 

La Bruyere has something to say, and that at 
length unusual for him, of pulpit eloquence. We 
select a few specimen sentences : — 

Christian eloquence has become a spectacle. That gos- 
pel sadness, which is its soul, is no longer to be observed m 
it; its place is supplied by advantages of facial expression, 
by inflexions of the voice, by regularity of gesticulation, by 
choice of words, and by long categories. The sacred word 
is no longer listened to seriously; it is a kind of amusement, 
one among many; it is a game in which there is rivalry, and 
in which there are those who lay wagers. 

Profane eloquence has been transferred, so to speak, from 



La Bruyere. 11 

the bar, . . . where it is no longer employed, to the pulpit, 
where it ought not to be found. 

Matches of eloquence are made at the very foot of the 
altar, and in the presence of the mysteries. He who listens 
sits in judgment on him who preaches, to condemn or to 
applaud, and is no more converted by the discourse which 
he praises than by that which he pronounces against. The 
orator pleases some, displeases others, and has an under- 
standing with all in one thing, — that as he does not seek 
to render them better, so they do not think of becoming 
better. 

The almost cynical acerbity of the preceding is 
ostensibly relieved of an obvious application to 
certain illustrious contemporary examples among 
preachers by the following open allusion to Bossuet 
and Bourdaloue : — 

The Bishop of Meaux [Bossuet] and Father Bourdaloue 
make me think of Demosthenes and Cicero. Both of them, 
masters of pulpit eloquence, have had the fortune of great 
models; the one has made bad critics, the other, bad 
imitators. 

Here is a happy instance of La Bruy&re's success- 
ful pains in redeeming a commonplace sentiment by 
means of a striking form of expression ; the writer 
is disapproving the use of oaths in support of one's 
testimony : — 

An honest man who says, Yes, or ISo, deserves to be 
believed ; his character swears for him. 

Highly satiric in his quiet way, La Bruyere knew 
how to be. Witness the following thrust at a con- 



78 Classic French Course in Unglish. 

temporary author, not named by the satirist, but, no 
doubt, recognized by the public of the time : — 

He maintains that the ancients, however unequal and 
negligent they may be, have fine traits ; he points these out ; 
and they are so fine that they make his criticism readable. 

How painstakingly, how self-consciously, La 
Bruy&re did his literary work, is evidenced by the 
following : — 

A good author, and one who writes with care, often 
has the experience of finding that the expression which he 
was a long time in search of without reaching it, and 
which at length he has found, is that which was the most 
simple, the most natural, and that which, as it would seem, 
should have presented itself at first, and without effort. 

We feel that the quality of La Bruy&re is such as 
to fit him for the admiration and enjoyment of but a 
comparatively small class of readers. He was some- 
what over-exquisite. His art at times became arti- 
fice — infinite labor of style to make commonplace 
thought seem valuable by dint of perfect expression. 
We dismiss La Bruyere with a single additional 
extract, — his celebrated parallel between Corneille 
and Racine : — 

Corneille subjects us to his characters and to his ideas; 
Racine accommodates himself to ours. The one paints men 
as they ought to be; the other paints them as they are. 
There is more in the former of what one admires, and 
of what one ought even to imitate; there is more in the 
latter of what one observes in others, or of what one expe- 
riences in one's self. The one inspires, astonishes, masters, 



La Bruyere. 79 

instructs; the other pleases, moves, touches, penetrates. 
Whatever there is most beautiful, most noble, most imperial, 
in the reason is made use of by the former; by the latter, 
whatever is most seductive and most delicate in passion. 
You find in the former, maxims, rules, and precepts; in the 
latter, taste and sentiment. You are more absorbed in the 
plays of Corneille; you are more shaken and more softened 
in those of Racine. Corneille is more moral ; Eacine, more 
natural. The one appears to make Sophocles his model ; the 
other owes more to Euripides. 



Less than half a century after La Rochefoucauld 
and La Bruyere had shown the way, Vauvenargues 
followed in a similar style of authorship, promising 
almost to rival the fame of his two predecessors. 
This writer, during his brief life (he died at thirty- 
two), produced one not inconsiderable literary work 
more integral and regular in form, entitled, " Intro- 
duction to the Knowledge of the Human Mind"; 
but it is his disconnected thoughts and observations 
chiefly that continue to preserve his name. 

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, though 
nobly born, was poor. His health was frail. He 
did not receive a good education in his 3'outh. In- 
deed, he was still in his youth when he went to the 
wars. His culture always remained narrow. He 
did not know Greek and Latin, when to know Greek 
and Latin was, as it were, the whole of scholarship. 
To crown his accidental disqualifications for liter- 
ary work, he fell a victim to the small-pox, which 
left him wrecked in body. This occurred almost 



80 Classic French Course in English. 

immediately after he abandoned a military career 
which had been fruitful to him of hardship, but not 
of promotion. In spite of all that was thus against 
him, Vauvenargues, in those years, few and evil, 
that were his, thought finely and justly enough to 
earn for himself a lasting place in the literary history 
of his nation. He was in the eighteenth century of 
France, without being of it. You have to separate 
him in thought from the infidels and the c c philoso- 
phers" of his time. He belongs in spirit to an 
earlier age. His moral and intellectual kindred was 
with such as Pascal, far more than with such as 
Voltaire. Vauvenargues is, however, a writer for 
the few, instead of for the many. His fame is high, 
but it is not wide. Historically, he forms a step- 
ping-stone of transition to a somewhat similar nine- 
teenth-century name, that of Joubert. A very few 
sentences of his will suffice to indicate to our readers 
the quality of Vauvenargues. Self-evidently, the 
following antithesis drawn by him between Corneille 
and Racine is subtly and ingeniously thought, as 
well as very happily expressed — this, whatever 
may be considered to be its aptness in point of 
literary appreciation : — 

Corneille' s heroes often say great things without inspiring 
them; Racine's inspire them without saying them. 

Here is a good saying : — 

It is a great sign of mediocrity always to be moderate in 
praising. 



La Fontaine. 81 

There is worldly wisdom also here : — 

He who knows how to turn his prodigalities to good 
account, practises a large and noble economy. 

Virgil's " They are able, because they seem to 
themselves to be able," is recalled by this : — 

The consciousness of our strength makes our strength 
greater. 

So much for Vauvenargues. 



VI. 

LA FONTAINE. 
1621-1695. 



La Fontaine enjoys a unique fame. He has abso- 
lutely " no fellow in the firmament" of literature. 
He is the only fabulist, of any age or any nation, 
that, on the score simply of his fables, is admitted 
to be poet as well as fabulist. There is perhaps no 
other literary name whatever among the French, by 
long proof more secure, than is La Fontaine's, of 
universal and of immortal renown. Such a fame is, 
of course, not the most resplendent in the world ; but 
to have been the first, and to remain thus far the 
only, writer of fables enjoying recognition as true 
poetry, — this surely is an achievement entitling La 



82 Classic French Course in English. 

Fontaine to monumental mention in any sketch, how* 
ever summary, of French literature. 

Jean de La Fontaine was humbly born, at Chateau* 
Thierry in Champagne. His early education was 
sadly neglected. At twenty years of age he was 
still phenomenally ignorant. About this time, being 
now better situated, he developed a taste for the 
classics and for poetry. With La Fontaine the man, 
it is the sadly familiar French story of debauched 
manners in life and in literary production. We 
cannot acquit him, but we are to condemn him only 
in common with the most of his age and of his na- 
tion. As the world goes, La Fontaine was a "good 
fellow,' ' never lacking friends. These were held fast 
in loyalty to the poet, not so much by any ster- 
ling worth of character felt in him, as by an ex- 
haustless, easy-going good-nature, that, despite his 
social insipidity, made La Fontaine the most accept- 
able of every-day companions. It would be easy to 
repeat many stories illustrative of this personal qual- 
ity in La Fontaine, while to tell a single story illus- 
trative of any lofty trait in his character would be 
perhaps impossible. Still, La Fontaine seemed not 
ungrateful for the benefits he received from others ; 
and gratitude, no commonplace virtue, let us accord- 
ingly reckon to the credit of a man in general so 
slenderly equipped with positive claims to admiring 
personal regard. The mirror of bonhomie (easy- 
hearted good-fellowship), he always was. Indeed, 
that significant, almost untranslatable, French word 



La Fontaine. 83 

might have been coined to fit La Fontaine's case. 
On his amiable side — a full hemisphere or more of 
the man — it sums him up completely. Twenty years 
long, this mirror of bonhomie was domiciliated, 
like a pet animal, under the hospitable roof of the 
celebrated Madame de la Sabliere. There was truth 
as well as humor implied in what she said one day : 
' * I have sent away all my domestics ; I have kept 
only my dog, my cat, and La Fontaine.' ' 

But La Fontaine had that in him which kept the 
friendship of serious men. Moliere, a grave , even 
melancholy spirit, however gay in his comedies ; 
Boileau and Racine, decorous both of them, at least 
in manners, — constituted, together with La Fontaine, 
a kind of private " Academy," existing on a diminu- 
tive scale, which was not without its important influ- 
ence on French letters. La Fontaine seems to have 
been a sort of Goldsmith in this club of wits, the 
butt of many pleasantries from his colleagues, called 
out by his habit of absent-mindedness. St. Augus- 
tine was one night the subject of an elaborate eulogy, 
which La Fontaine lost the benefit of, through a 
reverie of his own indulged meantime on a quite dif- 
ferent character. Catching, however, at the name, 
La Fontaine, as he came to himself for a moment, 
betrayed the secret of his absent thoughts by asking, 
" Do you think St. Augustine had as much wit as 
Rabelais?" — ; * Take care, Monsieur La Fontaine: 
you have put one of your stockings on wrong side 
out," — he had actually done so, — was the only 



84 Classic French Course in English. 

answer vouchsafed to his question. The speaker in 
this case was a doctor of the Sorbonne (brother to 
Boileau), present as guest. The story is told of 
La Fontaine, that egged on to groundless jealousy 
of his wife, — a wife whom he never really loved, and 
whom he soon would finally abandon, — he challenged 
a military friend of his to combat with swords. The 
friend was amazed, and, amazed, reluctantly fought 
with La Fontaine, whom he easily put at his mercy. 
" Now, what is this for? " he demanded. " The pub- 
lic says you visit my house for my wife's sake, not 
for mine/' said La Fontaine. u Then I never will 
come again. " "Far from it," responds La Fon- 
taine, seizing his friend's hand. " J have satisfied 
the public. Now you must come to my house every 
day, or I will fight you again." The two went back 
in company, and breakfasted together in mutual good 
humor. 

A trait or two more, and there will have been 
enough of the man La Fontaine. It is said that 
when, on the death of Madame de la Sablicre, La 
Fontaine was homeless, he was met on the street by 
a friend, who exclaimed, "I was looking for you ; 
come to my house, and live with me!" U I was 
on the way there," La Fontaine characteristically 
replied. At seventy, La Fontaine went through a 
process of " conversion," so called, in which he pro- 
fessed repentance of his sins. On the genuineness 
of this inward experience of La Fontaine, it is not 
for a fellow-creature of his, especially at this dis- 



La Fontaine. 85 

tance of time, to pronounce. "When he died, at 
seventy-three, Fenelon could say of him (in Latin), 
4i La Fontaine is no more! He is no more; and 
with him have gone the playful jokes, the merry 
laugh, the artless graces, and the sweet Muses ! " 

La Fontaine's earliest works were Contes, so 
styled ; that is, stories, tales, or romances. These 
are in character such that the subsequent happy 
change in manners, if not in morals, has made them 
unreadable, — for their indecency. We need con- 
cern ourselves only with the Fables, for it is on 
these that La Fontaine's fame securely rests. The 
basis of story in them was not generally original with 
La Fontaine. He took whatever fittest came to his 
hand. With much modesty, he attributed all to 
^Esop and Phaedrus. But invention of his own is 
not altogether wanting to his books of fables. Still, 
it is chiefly the consummate artful artlessness of the 
form that constitutes the individual merit of La 
Fontaine's productions. With something, too, of 
the air of real poetry, he has undoubtedly invested 
his verse. 

We give, first, the brief fable which is said to 
have been the prime favorite of the author himself. 
It is the fable of "The Oak and the Reed." Of this 
fable, French critics have not scrupled to speak in 
terms of almost the very highest praise. Chamfort 
says, "Let one consider, that, within the limit of 
thirty lines, La Fontaine, doing nothing but yield 
himself to the current of his story, has taken on 



86 Classic French Course in English. 

every tone, that of poetry the most graceful, that of 
poetry the most lofty, and one will not hesitate to 
affirm, that, at the epoch at which this fable ap- 
peared, there was nothing comparable to it in the 
French language. " There are, to speak precisely, 
thirty-two lines in the fable. In this one case, let 
us try representing La Fontaine's compression by 
our English form. For the rest of our specimens, 
we shall use Elizur Wright's translation, — a meri- 
torious one, still master of the field which, near fifty 
years ago, it entered as pioneer. Mr. Wright here 
expands La Fontaine's thirty-two verses to forty- 
four. The additions are not ungraceful, but they 
encumber somewhat the Attic neatness and sim- 
plicity of the original. We ought to say, that La 
Fontaine boldly broke with the tradition which had 
been making Alexandrines — lines of six feet — 
obligatory in French verse. He rhymes irregularly, 
at choice, and makes his verses long or short, as 
pleases him. The closing verse of the present piece 
is, in accordance with the intended majesty of the 
representation, an Alexandrine. 

The Oak one day said to the Reed, 
"Justly might you dame Nature blame: 
A wren's weight would bow down your frame; 

The lightest wind that chance may make 

Dimple the surface of the lake 

Your head bends low indeed, 
The while, like Caucasus, my front 
To meet the branding sun is wont, 
Kay, more, to take the tempest's brunt. 



La Fontaine. 87 

A blast you feel, I feel a breeze. 
Had you been born beneath my roof, 
Wide-spread, of leafage weather-proof, 

Less had you known your life to tease ; 

I should have sheltered you from storm. 

But oftenest you rear your form 
On the moist limits of the realm of wind. 
Nature, methinks, against you sore has sinned." 

" Your pity/' answers him the Reed, 
" Bespeaks you kind ; but spare your pain; 
I more than you may winds disdain. 

I bend, and break not. You, indeed, 
Against their dreadful strokes till now 
Have stood, nor tamed your back to bow: 
But wait we for the end." 

Scarce had he spoke, 
When fiercely from the far horizon broke 
The wildest of the children, fullest fraught 
With terror, that till then the North had brought. 

The tree holds good ; the reed it bends. 

The wind redoubled might expends, 
And so well works that from his bed 
Him it uproots who nigh to heaven his head 
Held, and whose feet reached to the kingdom of the 
dead. 



In the fable of the u Rat retired from the 
World," La Fontaine rallies the monks. With French 
finesse, he hits his mark by expressly avoiding it. 
" What think you I mean by my disobliging rat? A 
monk ? No, but a Mahometan devotee ; I take it 
for granted that a monk is always ready with his 
help to the needy ! " 



88 Classic French Course in English. 

The sage Levantines have a tale 

About a rat that weary grew 
Of all the cares which life assail, 

And to a Holland cheese withdrew. 
His solitude was there profound, 
Extending through his world so round. 
Our hermit lived on that within; 
And soon his industry had been 
With claws and teeth so good, 

That in his novel heritage, 

He had in store for wants of age, 
Both house and livelihood. 
What more could any rat desire ? 

He grew fat, fair, and round. 

God's blessings thus redound 
To those who in his vows retire. 
One day this personage devout, 
Whose kindness none might doubt, 
Was asked, by certain delegates 
That came from Rat United States, 
For some small aid, for they 
To foreign parts were on their way, 
For succor in the great cat-war : 
Katopolis beleaguered sore, 

Their whole republic drained and poor, 
No morsel in their scrips they bore. 

Slight boon they craved, of succor sure 
In days at utmost three or four. 
"My friends," the hermit said, 
" To worldly things I'm dead. 
How can a poor recluse 
To such a mission be of use ? 
What can he do but pray 
That God will aid it on its way ? 
And so, my friends, it is my prayer 
That God will have you in his care." 



La Fontaine. 89 

His well-fed saintship said no more, 
But in their faces shut the door. 

What think you, reader, is the service, 
For which I use this niggard rat ? 

To paint a monk ? No, but a dervise. 
A monk, I think, however fat, 
Must be more bountiful than that. 



The fable entitled " Death and the Dying" is 
much admired for its union of pathos with wit. 
" The Two Doves" is another of La Fontaine's 
more tender inspirations. " The Mogul's Dream " 
is a somewhat ambitious flight of the fabulist's 
muse. On the whole, however, the masterpiece 
among the fables of La Fontaine is that of "The 
Animals Sick of the Plague." Such at least is the 
opinion of critics in general. The idea of this fable 
is not original with La Fontaine. The homilists of 
the middle ages used a similar fiction to enforce 
on priests the duty of impartiality in administering 
the sacrament, so called, of confession. We give 
this famous fable as our closing specimen of La 
Fontaine : — 

The sorest ill that Heaven hath 
Sent on this lower world in wrath, — 
The plague (to call it by its name), 
One single day of which 

Would Pluto's ferryman enrich, 
Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame. 
They died not all, but all were sick: 
No hunting now, by force or trick, 



90 Classic French Course in English. 

To save what might so soon expire. 
No food excited their desire : 
Nor wolf nor fox now watched to slay 
The innocent and tender prey. 

The turtles fled, 
So love and therefore joy were dead. 
The lion council held, and said, 
" My friends, I do believe 
This awful scourge for which we grieve, 
Is for our sins a punishment 
Most righteously by Heaven sent. 
Let us our guiltiest beast resign, 
A sacrifice to wrath divine. 
Perhaps this offering, truly small, 
May gain the life and health of all. 
By history we find it noted 
That lives have been just so devoted. 
Then let us all turn eyes within, 
And ferret out the hidden sin. 
Himself, let no one spare nor flatter, 
But make clean conscience in the matter. 
For me, my appetite has played the glutton 
Too much and often upon mutton. 
What harm had e'er my victims done ? 

I answer, truly, None. 
Perhaps, sometimes, by hunger pressed, 

I've eat the shepherd with the rest. 

I yield myself if need there be; 

And yet I think, in equity, 
Each should confess his sins with me; 
For laws of right and justice cry, 
The guiltiest alone should die." 
" Sire," said the fox, " your majesty 
Is humbler than a king should be, 
And over-squeamish in the case. 

What! eating stupid sheep a crime ? 

No, never, sire, at any time. 



La Fontaine. 91 

It rather was an act of grace, 

A mark of honor to their race. 

And as to shepherds, one may swear, 

The fate your majesty describes, 
Is recompense less full than fair 

For such usurpers o'er our tribes." 

Thus Keuard glibly spoke, 
And loud applause from listeners broke. 
Of neither tiger, boar, nor bear, 
Did any keen inquirer dare 
To ask for crimes of high degree ; 

The fighters, biters, scratchers, all 
From every mortal sin were free; 

The very dogs, both great and small, 

Were saints, as far as dogs could be. 

The ass, confessing in his turn, 
Thus spoke in tones of deep concern : 
" I happened through a mead to pass; 
The monks, its owners, were at mass: 
Keen hunger, leisure, tender grass, 

And, add to these the devil, too, 

All tempted me the deed to do. 
I browsed the bigness of my tongue : 
Since truth must out, I own it wrong." 
On this, a hue and cry arose, 
As if the beasts were all his foes. 
A wolf, haranguing lawyer-wise, 
Denounced the ass for sacrifice, — 
The bald-pate, scabby, ragged lout, 
By whom the plague had come, no doubt. 
His fault was judged a hanging crime. 

What! eat another's grass ? Oh, shame! 
The noose of rope, and death sublime, 

For that offence were all too tame ! 

And soon poor Grizzle felt the same. 



92 Classic French Course in English. 

Thus human courts acquit the strong, 
And doom the weak, as therefore wrong. 

It is suitable to add, in conclusion, that La Fon- 
taine is a crucial author for disclosing the irrecon- 
cilable difference that exists, at bottom, between 
the Englishman's and the Frenchman's idea of 
poetry. No English-speaker, heir of Shakspeare 
and Milton, will ever be able to satisfy a French- 
man with admiration such as he can conscientiously 
profess for the poetry of La Fontaine. 



VII. 

MOLIERE. 
1623-1673. 



Moliere is confessedly the greatest writer of 
comedy in the world. Greek Menander might have 
disputed the palm ; but Menander' s works have per- 
ished, and his greatness must be guessed. Who 
knows but we guess him too great? Moliere 's 
works survive, and his greatness may be measured. 

We have stinted our praise. Moliere is not only 
the foremost name in a certain department of litera- 
ture ; he is one of the foremost names in literature. 
The names are few on which critics are willing to 
bestow this distinction. But critics generally agree 
in bestowing this distinction on Moliere. 



Moliere. 93 

Moli&re's comedy is by no means mere farce. 
Farces he wrote, undoubtedly ; and some element 
of farce, perhaps, entered to qualify nearly every 
comedy that flowed from his pen. But it is not for 
his farce that Moliere is rated one of the few great- 
est producers of literature. Moliere' s comedy con- 
stitutes to Moliere the patent that it does of high 
degree in genius, not because it provokes laughter, 
but because, amid laughter provoked, it not seldom 
reveals, as if with flashes of lightning, — lightning 
playful, indeed, but lightning that might have been 
deadly, — the " secrets of the nethermost abyss" of 
human nature. Not human manners merely, those 
of a time, or of a race, but human attributes, those 
of all times, and of all races, are the things with 
which, in his higher comedies, Moliere deals. Some 
transient whim of fashion may in these supply to 
him the mould of form that he uses, but it is human 
nature itself that supplies to Moliere the substance 
of his dramatic creations. Now and again, if you 
read Moliere wisely and deeply, you find your laugh- 
ter at comedy fairly frozen in } T our throat, by a 
gelid horror seizing you, to feel that these follies or 
these crimes displayed belong to that human nature, 
one and the same everywhere and always, of which 
also you yourself partake. Comedy, Dante, too, 
called his poem, which included the "Inferno." 
And a Dantesque quality, not of method, but of 
power, is to be felt in Moliere. 

This character in Moliere the writer, accords 



94 Classic French Course in EnglisJt. 

with the character of the man Moliere. It might 
not have seemed natural to say of Moliere, as was 
said of Dante, " There goes the man that has been 
in hell." But Moliere was melancholy enough in 
temper and in mien to have well inspired an ex- 
clamation such as, ' There goes the man that has 
seen the human heart. ' 

A poet as well as a dramatist, his own fellow- 
countrymen, at least, feel Moliere to be. In Victor 
Hugo's list of the eight greatest poets of all time, 
two are Hebrews (Job and Isaiah), two Greeks 
(Homer and iEschylus), one is a Roman (Lucre- 
tius), one an Italian (Dante), one an Englishman 
(Shakspeare), — seven. The eighth could hardly 
fail to be a Frenchman, and that Frenchman is 
Moliere. Mr. Swinburne might perhaps make the 
list nine, but he would certainly include Victor Hugo 
himself. 

Curiously enough, Moliere is not this great 
writer's real name. It is a stage name. It was 
assumed by the bearer when he was about twenty- 
four years of age, on occasion of his becoming one 
in a strolling band of players, — in 1646 or there- 
about. This band, originally composed of amateurs, 
developed into a professional dramatic company, 
which passed through various transformations, until, 
from being at first grandiloquently self-styled, 
L'lllustre Theatre, it was, twenty years after, rec- 
ognized by the national title of Theatre Francais. 
Moliere's real name was Jean Baptiste Poquelin. 



Moliere. 95 

Young Poquelin's bent, early encouraged by see- 
ing plays and ballets, was strongly toward the stage. 
The drama, under the quickening patronage of 
Louis XIII. 's lordly minister, Cardinal Richelieu, 
was a great public interest of those times in Paris. 
Moli&re's evil star, too, it was perhaps in part that 
brought him back to Paris, from Orleans. He ad- 
mired a certain actress in the capital. She became 
the companion — probably not innocent companion 
— of his wandering life as actor. A sister of this 
actress — a sister young enough to be daughter, 
instead of sister — Moli&re finally married. She led 
her jealous husband a wretched conjugal life. A 
peculiarly dark tradition of shame, connected with 
Moli&re's marriage, has lately been to a good degree 
dispelled. But it is not possible to redeem this 
great man's fame to chastity and honor. He paid 
heavily, in like misery of his own, for whatever 
pangs of jealousy he inflicted. There was some- 
times true tragedy for himself hidden within the 
comedy that he acted for others. (Moli&re, to the 
very end of his life, acted in the comedies that he 
wrote.) When some play of his represented the 
torments of jealousy in the heart of a husband, it 
was probably not so much acting, as it was real life, 
that the spectators saw proceeding on the stage be- 
tween Moli&re and his wife, confronted with each 
other in performing the piece. 

Despite his faults, Moli&re was cast in a noble, 
generous mould, of character as well as of genius. 



96 Classic French Course in English. 

Expostulated with for persisting to appear on the 
stage when his health was such that he put his life 
at stake in so doing, he replied that the men and 
women of his company depended for their bread on 
the play's going through, and appear he would. He 
actually died an hour or so after playing the part of 
the Imaginary Invalid in his comedy of that name. 
That piece was the last work of his pen. 

Moliere produced in all some thirty dramatic 
pieces, from among which we select a few of the 
most celebrated for brief description and illustra- 
tion. 

The "Bourgeois Gentilhomme " ("Shopkeeper 
turned Gentleman ") partakes of the nature of the 
farce quite as much as it does of the comedy. But 
it is farce such as only a man of genius could pro- 
duce. In it Moli&re ridicules the airs and affectations 
of a rich man vulgarly ambitious to figure in a social 
rank too exalted for his birth, his breeding, or his 
merit. Jourdain is the name under which Moli&re 
satirizes such a character. We give a fragment 
from one of the scenes. M. Jourdain is in process 
of fitting himself for that higher position in society 
to which he aspires. He will equip himself with 
the necessary knowledge. To this end he employs a 
professor of philosophy to come and give him lessons 
at his house : — 



M. Jourdain. I have the greatest desire in the world to 
be learned; and it vexes me more than I can tell, that my 



Moliere. 97 

father and mother did not make me learn thoroughly all the 
sciences when I was young. 

Professor of Philosophy. This is a praiseworthy feel- 
ing. Nam sine doctrina vita est quasi mortis imago. You 
understand this, and you have, no doubt, a knowledge of 
Latin ? 

M. Jour. Yes ; but act as if I had none. Explain to me 
the meaning of it. 

Prof. Phil. The meaning of it is, that, without science, 
life is an image of death. 

M. Jour. That Latin is quite right. 

Prof. Phil. Have you any principles, any rudiments, of 
science ? 

M. Jour. Oh, yes! I can read and write. 

Prof. Phil. With what would you like to begin ? Shall 
I teach you logic ? 

M. Jour. And what may this logic be ? 

Prof. Phil. It is that which teaches us the three opera- 
tions of the mind. 

M. Jour. What are they — these three operations of the 
mind? 

Prof. Phil. The first, the second, and the third. The 
first is to conceive well by means of universals; the second, 
to judge well by means of categories ; and the third, to draw 
a conclusion aright by means of the figures Barbara, Cela- 
rent, Darii, Ferio, Baralipton, etc. 

M. Jour. Pooh ! what repulsive words ! This logic does 
not by any means suit me. Teach me something more en- 
livening. 

Prof. Phil. Will you learn moral philosophy ? 

M. Jour. Moral philosophy ? 

Prof. Phil. Yes. 

M. Jour. What does it say, this moral philosophy ? 

Prof. Phil. It treats of happiness, teaches men to mod- 
erate their passions, and — 

M. Jour. No, none of that. I am devilishly hot-tern- 



98 Classic French Course in English. 

pered, and morality, or no morality, I like to give full vent 
to my anger whenever I have a mind to it. 

Prof. Phil. Would you like to learn physics ? 

M. Jo uu. And what have physics to say for themselves? 

Prof. Phil. Physics are that science which explains the 
principles of natural things and the properties of bodies; 
which discourses of the nature of the elements, of metals, 
minerals, stones, plants, and animals ; which teaches us the 
cause of all the meteors, the rainbow, the ignis fatuus, 
comets, lightning, thunder, thunderbolts, rain, snow, hail, 
and whirlwinds. 

M. Jo uk. There is too much hullaballoo in all that, too 
much riot and rumpus. 

Prof. Phil. Very good. 

M. Jour. And now I want to intrust you with a great 
secret. 1 am in love with a lady of quality, and I should be 
glad if you would help me to write something to her in a short 
letter which I mean to drop at her feet. 

Prof. Phil. Yery well. 

M. Jour. That will be gallant, will it not ? 

Prof. Phil. Undoubtedly. Is it verse you wish to write 
to her ? 

M. Jour. Oh, no ! not verse. 

Prof. Phil. You only wish prose ? 

M. Jour. No. I wish for neither verse nor prose. 

Prof. Phil. It must be one or the other. 

M. Jour. Why ? 

Prof. Phil. Because, sir, there is nothing by which we 
can express ourselves except prose or verse. 

M. Jour. There is nothing but prose or verse ? 

Prof. Phil. No, sir. Whatever is not prose, is verse; 
and whatever is not verse, is prose. 

M. Jour. And when we speak, what is that, then ? 

Prof. Phil. Prose. 

M. Jour. What! when I say, " Nicole, bring me my 
slippers, and give me my nightcap," is that prose ? 



Moliere. 99 

Prof. Phil. Yes, sir. 

M. Jour Upon my word, I have been speaking prose 
these forty years without being aware of it ; and I am under 
the greatest obligation to you for informing me of it. Well, 
then, I wish to write to her in a letter, " Fair Marchioness, 
your beautiful eyes make me die of love; " but I would have 
this worded in a genteel manner, and turned prettily. 

Prof. Phil. Say that the fire of her eyes has reduced 
your heart to ashes ; that you suffer day and night for her, 
tortures — 

M. Jour. No, no, no, I don't any of that. I simply wish 
for what I tell you, — " Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes 
make me die of love." 

Prof. Phil. Still, you might amplify the thing a little. 

M. Jour. No, I tell you, I will have nothing but these 
very words in the letter; but they must be put in a fashion- 
able way, and arranged as they should be. Pray show me a 
little, so that I may see the different ways in which they can 
be put. 

Prof. Phil. They may be put first of all, as you have 
said, " Fair Marchioness, your beautiful eyes make me die of 
love; " or else, " Of love die make me, fair Marchioness, your 
beautiful eyes;" or, " Your beautiful eyes of love make me, 
fair Marchioness, die; " or, " Die of love your beautiful eyes, 
fair Marchioness, make me;" or else, " Me make your beau- 
tiful eyes die, fair Marchioness, of love." 

M. Jour. But of all these ways, which is the best ? 

Prof. Phil. The one you said, — "Fair Marchioness, 
your beautiful eyes make me die of love." 
i M. Jour. Yet I have never studied, and I did all right 
off at the first shot. 



The u Bourgeois Gentilhomme " is a very amusing 
comedy throughout. 

From " Les Femmes Savantes " ("The Learned 



100 Classic French Course in English. 

Women ") — " The Blue-Stockings/ ' we might per- 
haps freely render the title — we present one scene 
to indicate the nature of the comedy. There had 
grown to be a fashion in Paris, among certain women 
high in social rank, of pretending to the distinction 
of skill in literary criticism, and of proficiency in 
science. It was the Hotel de Rambouillet reduced 
to absurdity. That fashionable affectation Moliere 
made the subject of his comedy, "The Learned 
Women." 

In the following extracts, Moliere satirizes, under 
the name of Trissotin, a contemporary writer, one 
Cotin. The poem which Trissotin reads for the 
learned women to criticise and admire, is an actual 
production of this gentleman. Imagine the domestic 
coterie assembled, and Trissotin, the poet, their 
guest. He is present, prepared to regale them with 
what he calls his sonnet. We need to explain that 
the original poem is thus inscribed : u To Mademoi- 
selle de Longueville, now Duchess of Namur, on 
her Quartan Fever." The conceit of the sonneteer 
is that the fever is an enemy luxuriously lodged in 
the lovely person of its victim, and there insidiously 
plotting against her life : — 

Tbissotin. Sonnet to the Princess Urania on her Fever. 
Your prudence sure is fast asleep, 
That thus luxuriously you keep 
And lodge magnificently so 
Your very hardest-hearted foe. 

Belise. Ah! what a pretty beginning! 

Armande. What a charming turn it has! 



Moliere. 101 

Philaminte. He alone possesses the talent of making 
easy verses. 

Arm. We must yield to prudence fast asleep. 

Bel. Lodge one's very hardest-hearted foe is full of 
charms for me. 

Phil. I like luxuriously and magnificently : these two 
adverbs joined together sound admirably. 

Bel. Let us hear the rest. 

Triss. Your prudence sure is fast asleep, 
That thus luxuriously you keep 
And lodge magnificently so 
Your very hardest-hearted foe. 

Arm. Prudence fast asleep. 

Bel. To lodge one's foe. 

Phil. Luxuriously and magnificently. 

Triss. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say, 
From out your chamber, decked so gay, 
Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife, 
Bold she assails your lovely life. 

Bel. Ah ! gently. Allow me to breathe, I beseech you. 

Arm. Give us time to admire, I beg. 

Phil. One feels, at hearing these verses, an indescribable 
something which goes through one's inmost soul, and makes 
one feel quite faint. 

Arm. Drive forth that foe, whatever men say, 

From out your chamber, decked so gay — 
How prettily chamber, decked so gay, is said here! And 
with what wit the metaphor is introduced ! 

Phil. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say. 
Ah! in what an admirable taste that whate'er men say is! 
To my mind, the passage is invaluable. 

Arm. My heart is also in love with whate'er men say. 

Bel. I am of your opinion: whate' ?r men say is a happy 
expression. 

Arm. I wish I had written it. 

Bel. It is worth a whole poem. 



102 Classic French Course in English. 

Phil. But do you, like me, thoroughly understand the 
wit of it ? 
Arm. and Bel. Oh! Oh! 
Phil. Drive forth that foe, whatever men say. 
Although another should take the fever's part, pay no 
attention ; laugh at the gossips. 

Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say, 
Whate'er men say, whatever men say. 
This whate'er men say, says a great deal more than it 
seems. I do not know if every one is like me, but I discover 
in it a hundred meanings. 

Bel. It is true that it says more than its size seems to 
imply. 

Phil, (to Trissotin). But when you wrote this charm- 
ing whate'er men say, did you yourself understand all its 
energy ? Did you realize all that it tells us ? And did you 
then think that you were writing something so witty ? 

Triss. Ah! ah! 

Arm. I have likewise the ingrate in my head, — this 
ungrateful, unjust, uncivil fever that ill-treats people who 
entertain her. 

Phil. In short, both the stanzas are admirable. Let us 
come quickly to the triplets, I pray. 

Arm. Ah! once more, whate'er men say, I beg. 

Triss. Drive forth that foe, whate'er men say, — 

Phil., Arm., and Bel. Whate'er men say ! 

Triss. From out your chamber, decked so gay, — 

Phil., Arm., and Bel. Chamber decked so gay ! 

Triss. Where, ingrate vile, with murderous knife, — 

Phil., Arm., and Bel. That ingrate fever! 

Triss. Bold she assails your lovely life. 

Phil. Your lovely life! 

Arm. and Bel. Ah! 

Triss. What ! reckless of your ladyhood, 

Still fiercely seeks to shed your blood, — 

Phil., Arm., and Bel. Ah! 



Moliere. 103 

Triss. And day and night to work you harm. 

When to the baths sometime you've brought her, 
No more ado, with your own arm 
Whelm her and drown her in the water. 

Phil. Ah ! It is quite overpowering. 

Bel. I faint. 

Arm. I die from pleasure. 

Phil. A thousand sweet thrills seize one. 

Arm. When to the baths sometime you've brought her, 

Bel. No more ado, with your own arm 

Phil. Whelm her and drown her in the water. 
With your own arm, drown her there in the baths. 

Arm. In your verses we meet at each step with charming 
beauty. 

Bel. One promenades through them with rapture. 

Phil. One treads on fine things only. 

Arm. They are little lanes all strewn with roses. 

Triss. Then, the sonnet seems to you — 

Phil. Admirable, new ; and never did any one make any 
thing more beautiful. 

Bel. (to Henriette). What! my niece, you listen to 
what has been read without emotion! You play there but a 
sorry part ! 

Hen. We each of us play the best part we can, my aunt; 
and to be a wit does not depend on our will. 

Triss. My verses, perhaps, are tedious to you. 

Hen. No. I do not listen. 

Phil. Ah ! Let us hear the epigram. 

But our readers, we think, will consent to spare 
the epigram. They will relish, however, a fragment 
taken from a subsequent part of the same protracted 
scene. The conversation has made the transition 
from literary criticism to philosophy, in Moliere' s 
time a fashionable study rendered such by the con- 



104 Classic French Course in English. 

temporary genius and fame of Descartes. Armande 
resents the limitations imposed upon her sex : — 

Arm. It is insulting our sex too grossly to limit our 
intelligence to the power of judging of a skirt, of the make 
of a garment, of the beauties of lace, or of a new brocade. 

Bel. We must rise above this shameful condition, and 
bravely proclaim our emancipation. 

Triss. Every one knows my respect for the fairer sex, and 
that, if I render homage to the brightness of their eyes, I also 
honor the splendor of their intellect. 

Phil. And our sex does you justice in this respect: but 
we will show to certain minds who treat us with proud con- 
tempt, that women also have knowledge; that, like men, 
they can hold learned meetings — regulated, too, by better 
rules; that they wish to unite what elsewhere is kept apart, 
join noble language to deep learning, reveal nature's laws by 
a thousand experiments; and, on all questions proposed, 
admit every party, and ally themselves to none. 

Triss. For order, I prefer peripateticism. 

Phil. For abstractions, I love platonism. 

Arm. Epicurus pleases me, for his tenets are solid. 

Bel. I agree with the doctrine of atoms ; but I find it 
difficult to understand a vacuum, and I much prefer subtile 
matter. 

Triss. I quite agree with Descartes about magnetism. 

Arm. I like his vortices. 

Phil. And I, his falling worlds. 

Arm. I long to see our assembly opened, and to distin- 
guish ourselves by some great discovery. 

Triss. Much is expected from your enlightened knowl- 
edge, for nature has hidden few things from you. 

Phil. For my part, I have, without boasting, already 
made one discovery; I have plainly seen men in the moon. 

Bel. I have not, I believe, as yet quite distinguished 
men, but I have seen steeples as plainly as I see you. 



Moliere. 105 

Arm. In addition to natural philosophy, we will dive into 
grammar, history, verse, ethics, and politics. 

Phil. I find in ethics charms which delight my heart ; 
it was formerly the admiration of great geniuses : but I give 
the preference to the Stoics, and I think nothing so grand as 
their founder. 

u Les Precieuses Ridicules" is an earlier and 
lighter treatment of the same theme. The object of 
ridicule in both these pieces was a lapsed and degen- 
erate form of what originally was a thing worthy of 
respect, and even of praise. At the Hotel de Ram- 
bouillet, conversation was cultivated as a fine art. 
There was, no doubt, something overstrained in the 
standards which the ladies of that circle enforced. 
Their mutual communication was all conducted in a 
peculiar style of language, the natural deterioration 
of which was into a kind of euphuism, such as Eng- 
lish readers will remember to have seen exemplified 
in Walter Scott's Sir Piercie Shafton. These ladies 
called each other, with demonstrative fondness, " Ma 
precieuse." Hence at last the term precieuse as a 
designation of ridicule. Madame de Sevigne was 
a pi*ecieuse. But she, with man}' of her peers, was 
too rich in sarcastic common sense to be a precieuse 
ridicule. Moli&re himself, thrifty master of policy 
that he was, took pains to explain that he did not 
satirize the real thing, but only the affectation. 

u Tartuffe, or the Impostor," is perhaps the most 
celebrated of all Moli&re' s plays. Scarcely comedy, 
scarcely tragedy, it partakes of both characters. 



106 Classic French Course in English. 

Like tragedy, serious in purpose, it has a happy 
ending like comedy. Pity and terror are absent ; 
or, if not quite absent, these sentiments are present 
raised only to a pitch distinctly below the tragic. 
Indignation is the chief passion excited, or detesta- 
tion, perhaps, rather than indignation. This feeling 
is provided at last with its full satisfaction in the 
condign punishment visited on the impostor. 

The original "Tartuffe," like the most of Mo- 
li&re's comedies, is written in rhymed verse. We 
could not, with any effort, make the English-reading 
student of Moli&re sufficiently feel how much is lost 
when the form is lost which the creations of this 
great genius took, in their native French, under his 
own master hand. A satisfactory metrical render- 
ing is out of the question. The sense, at least, if 
not the incommunicable spirit, of the original is 
very well given in Mr. C. H. Wall's version, which 
we use. 

The story of " Tartuffe " is briefly this: Tar- 
tuffe, the hero, is a pure villain. He mixes no 
adulteration of good in his composition. He is hy- 
pocrisy itself, the strictly genuine article. Tartuffe 
has completely imposed upon one Orgon, a man of 
wealth and standing. Orgon, with his wife, and 
with his mother, in fact, believes in him absolutely. 
These people have received the canting rascal into 
their house, and are about to bestow upon him their 
daughter in marriage. The following scene from 
act first shows the skill with which Moliere could 



Moliere. 107 

exhibit, in a few strokes of bold exaggeration, the 
infatuation of Orgon's regard for Tartuffe. Orgon 
has been absent from home. He returns, and meets 
Cleante, his brother, whom, in his eagerness, he 
begs to excuse his not answering a question just 
addressed to him : — 

Orgon (to Cleante). Brother, pray excuse me: you 
will kindly allow me to allay my anxiety by asking news of 
the family. ( To Dorine, a maid-servant.) Has every thing 
gone on well these last two days ? What has happened ? 
How is everybody ? 

Dor. The day before yesterday our mistress was very 
feverish from morning to night, and suffered from a most 
extraordinary headache. 

Org. And Tartuffe ? 

Dor. Tartuffe ! He is wonderfully well, stout and fat, 
with blooming cheeks and ruddy lips. 

Org. Poor man! 

Dor. In the evening she felt very faint, and the pain in 
her head was so great that she could not touch any thing at 
supper. 

Org. And Tartuffe ? 

Dor. He ate his supper by himself before her, and very 
devoutly devoured a brace of partridges, and half a leg of 
mutton hashed. 

Org. Poor man ! 

Dor. She spent the whole of the night without getting 
one wink of sleep : she was very feverish, and we had to sit 
up with her until the morning. 

Org. And Tartuffe ? 

Dor. Overcome by a pleasant sleepiness, he passed from 
the table to his room, and got at once into his warmed bed, 
where he slept comfortably till the next morning. 

Org. Poor man ! 



108 Classic French Course in English. 

Dor. At last yielding to our persuasions, she consented 
to be bled, and immediately felt relieved. 

Org. And Tartuffe ? 

Dor. He took heart right valiantly, and fortifying his 
soul against all evils, to make up for the blood which our 
lady had lost, drank at breakfast four large bumpers of wine. 

Org. Poor man ! 

Dor. Now, at last, they are both well; and I will go and 
tell our lady how glad you are to hear of her recovery. 

Tartuffe repays the trust and love of his benefac- 
tor by making improper advances to that benefac- 
tor's wife. Orgon's son, who does not share his 
father's confidence in Tartuffe, happens to be an 
unseen witness of the man's infamous conduct. He 
exposes the hypocrite to Orgon, with the result of 
being himself expelled from the house for his pains ; 
while Tartuffe, in recompense for the injury done to 
his feelings, is presented with a gift-deed of Orgon's 
estate. But now Orgon's wife contrives to let her 
husband see and hear for himself the vileness of 
Tartuffe. This done, Orgon confronts the villain, 
and, with just indignation, orders him out of his 
house. Tartuffe reminds Orgon that the shoe is on 
the other foot ; that he is himself now owner there, 
and that it is Orgon, instead of Tartuffe, who must 
go. Orgon has an interview with his mother, who is 
exasperatingly sure still that Tartuffe is a maligned 
good man : — 

Madame Pernelle. I can never believe, my son, that 
he would commit so base an action. 
Org. What ? 



Moliere. 109 

Per. Good people are always subject to envy. 

Org. What do you mean, mother ? 

Per. That you live after a strange sort here, and that 
I am but too well aware of the ill will they all bear him. 

Org. What has this ill will to do with what I have just 
told you ? 

Per. I have told it you a hundred times when you were 
young, that in this world virtue is ever liable to persecution, 
and tnat, although the envious die, envy never dies. 

Org. But what has this to do with what has happened 
to-day ? 

Per. They have concocted a hundred foolish stories 
against him. 

Org. I have already told you that I saw it all myself. 

Per. The malice of evil-disposed persons is very great. 

Org. You would make me swear, mother! I tell you 
that I saw his audacious attempt with my own eyes. 

Per. Evil tongues have always some venom to pour 
forth; and here below, there is nothing proof against them. 

Org. You are maintaining a very senseless argument. 
I saw it, I tell you, — saw it with my own eyes ! what you 
can call s-a-w, saw! Must I din it over and over into your 
ears, and shout as loud as half a dozen people ? 

Per. Gracious goodness! appearances often deceive us! 
We must not always judge by what we see. 

Org. I shall go mad ! 

Per. We are by nature prone to judge wrongly, and 
good is often mistaken for evil. 

Org I ought to look upon his desire of seducing my 
wife as charitable ? 

Per. You ought to have good reasons before you accuse 
another, and you should have waited till you were quite 
sure of the fact. 

Org. Heaven save the mark ! how could I be more sure ? 
I suppose, mother, I ought to have waited till — you will 
make me say something foolish. 



110 Classic French Course in English. 

Per. In short, his soul is possessed with too pure a 
zeal ; and I cannot possibly conceive that he would think of 
attempting what you accuse him of. 

Org. If you were not my mother, I really don't know 
what I might now say to you, you make me so savage. 

The short remainder of the scene has for its im- 
portant idea, the suggestion that under the existing 
circumstances some sort of peace ought to be 
patched up between Orgon and Tartuffe. Mean- 
time one Loyal is observed coming, whereupon the 
fourth scene of act fifth opens : — 

Loy. (to Dorine at the farther part of the stage). Good- 
day, my dear sister; pray let me speak to your master. 

Dor. He is with friends, and I do not think he can see 
any one just now. 

Loy. I would not he intrusive. I feel sure that he will 
find nothing unpleasant in my visit: in fact, I come for 
something which will be very gratifying to him. 

Dor. What is your name ? 

Loy. Only tell him that I come from Mr. Tartuffe, for 
his benefit. 

Dor. (to Orgon). It is a man who comes in a civil way 
from Mr. Tartuffe, on some business which will make you 
glad, he says. 

Cle. (to Orgon). You must see who it is, and what the 
man wants. 

Org. (to Cle"ante). He is coming, perhaps, to settle 
matters between us in a friendly way. How, in this case, 
ought I to behave to him ? 

Cle. Don't show any resentment, and, if he speaks of 
an agreement, listen to him. 

Loy. (to Orgon). Your servant, sir! May heaven pun- 
ish whoever wrongs you! and may it be as favorable to you, 
sir, as I wish! 



Holier e. Ill 

Org. (aside to Cl^ante). This pleasant beginning 
agrees with my cod jectures, and argues some sort of recon- 
ciliation. 

Loy. All your family was always dear to me, and I 
served your father. 

Org. Sir, I am sorry and ashamed to say that I do not 
know who you are, neither do I remember your name. 

Loy. My name is Loyal ; I was born in Normandy, and 
am a royal bailiff in spite of envy. For the last forty years 
I have had the good fortune to fill the office, thanks to 
Heaven, with great credit; and I come, sir, with your leave, 
to serve you the writ of a certain order. 

Org. What ! you are here — 

Loy. Gently, sir, I beg. It is merely a summons, — a 
notice for you to leave this place, you and yours; to take 
away all your goods and chattels, and make room for others, 
without delay or adjournment, as hereby decreed. 

Org. I ! leave this place ? 

Loy. Yes, sir; if you please. The house incontestably 
belongs, as you are well aware, to the good Mr. Tartuffe. 
He is now lord and master of your estates, according to a 
deed I have in my keeping. It is in due form, and cannot 
be challenged. 

Damis (to Mr. Loyal). This great impudence is, in- 
deed, worthy of all admiration. 

Loy. (to Damis). Sir, I have nothing at all to do with 
you. (Pointing to Orgon.) My business is with this gen- 
tleman. He is tractable and gentle, and knows too well the 
duty of a gentleman to try to oppose authority. 

Org. But — 

Loy. Yes, sir: I know that you would not, for any 
thing, show contumacy; and that you will allow me, like a 
reasonable man, to execute the orders I have received. . . . 

The scene gives in conclusion some spirited by- 
play of asides and interruptions from indignant mem- 



112 Classic French Course in English. 

bers of the family. Then follows scene fifth, one 
exchange of conversation from which will sufficiently 
indicate the progress of the plot : — 

Okg. Well, mother, you see whether I am right; and you 
can judge of the rest by the writ. Do you at last acknowl- 
edge his rascality ? 

Per. I am thunderstruck, and can scarcely believe my 
eyes and ears. 

The next scene introduces Val&re, the noble lover 
of that daughter whom the infatuated father was 
bent on sacrificing to Tartuffe. Val&re comes to 
announce that Tartuffe, the villain, has accused Or- 
gon to the king. Orgon must fly. Vale re offers 
him his own carriage and money, — will, in fact, 
himself keep him company till he reaches a place of 
safety. As Orgon, taking hasty leave of his family, 
turns to go, he is encountered by — the following 
scene will show whom : — 

Tar. (stopping Orgon). Gently, sir, gently; not so fast, 
I beg. You have not far to go to find a lodging, and you are 
a prisoner in the king's name. 

Org. Wretch ! you had reserved this shaft for the last; 
by it you finish me, and crown all your perfidies. 

Tar. Your abuse has no power to disturb me, and I 
know how to suffer every thing for the sake of Heaven. 

Cle. Your moderation is really great, we must acknowl- 
edge. 

Da. How impudently the infamous wretch sports with 
Heaven! 

Tar. Your anger cannot move me. I have no other 
wish but to fulfil my duty. 



Moliere. 113 

Marianne. You may claim great glory from the per- 
formance of this duty : it is a very honorable employment 
for you. 

Tar. The employment cannot be otherwise than glori- 
ous, when it comes from the power that sends me here. 

Org. But do you remember that my charitable hand, 
ungrateful scoundrel, raised you from a state of misery ? 

Tar. Yes, I know what help I have received from you; 
but the interest of my king is my first duty. The just obli- 
gation of this sacred duty stifles in my heart all other claims ; 
and I would sacrifice to it friend, wife, relations, and myself 
with them. 

Elmire. The impostor ! 

Dor. With what treacherous cunning he makes a cloak 
of all that men revere ! . . . 

Tar. (to the Officer). I beg of you, sir, to deliver me 
from all this noise, and to act according to the orders you 
have received. 

Officer. I have certainly put off too long the discharge 
of my duty, and you very rightly remind me of it. To execute 
my order, follow me immediately to the prison in which a 
place is assigned to you. 

Tar. Who ? I, sir ? 

Officer. Yes, you. 

Tar. Why to prison ? 

Officer. To you I have no account to render. ( To Or- 
gon. ) Pray, sir, recover from your great alarm. We live 
under a king [Louis XIV.] who is an enemy to fraud, — a king 
who can read the heart, and whom all the arts of impostors 
cannot deceive. His great mind, endowed with delicate dis- 
cernment, at all times sees things in their true light. . . . 
He annuls, by his sovereign will, the terms of the contract by 
which you gave him [Tartuffe] your property. He moreover 
forgives you this secret offence in which you were involved 
by the flight of your friend. This to reward the zeal which 
you once showed for him in maintaining his rights, and to 



114 Classic French Course in English. 

prove that his heart, when it is least expected, knows how 
to recompense a good action. Merit with him is never lost, 
and he remembers good better than evil. 

Dor. Heaven be thanked ! 

Per. Ah ! I breathe again. 

El. What a favorable end to our troubles! 

Mar. Who would have foretold it ? 

Org. (to Tartuffe, as the Officer leads Mm off). Ah, 
wretch! now you are — 

Tartuffe thus disposed of, the play promptly ends, 
with a vanishing glimpse afforded us of a happy 
marriage in prospect for Valere with the daughter. 

Moliere is said to have had a personal aim in 
drawing the character of Tartuffe. This, at least, 
was like Dante. There is not much sweet laughter 
in such a comedy. But there is a power that is 
dreadful. 

Each succeeding generation of Frenchmen supplies 
its bright and ingenious wits who produce comedy. 
But as there is no second Shakspeare, so there is 
but one Moliere. 



Pascal. 115 

VIII. 

PASCAL. 
1623-1662. 

Pascal's fame is distinctly the fame of a man of 
genius. He achieved notable things. But it is 
what he might have done, still more than what he 
did, that fixes his estimation in the world of mind. 
Blaise Pascal is one of the chief intellectual glories 
of France. 

Pascal, the boy, had a strong natural bent toward 
mathematics. The story is that his father, in order 
to turn his son's whole force on the study of lan- 
guages, put out of the lad's reach all books treating 
his favorite subject. Thus shut up to his own 
resources, the masterful little fellow, about his 
eighth year, drawing charcoal diagrams on the floor, 
made perceptible progress in working out geometry 
for himself. At sixteen he produced a treatise on 
conic sections that excited the wonder and incredu- 
lity of Descartes. Later, he experimented in ba- 
rometry, and pursued investigations in mechanics. 
Later still, he made what seemed to be approaches 
toward Newton's binomial theorem. 

Vivid religious convictions meantime deeply 
affected Pascal's mind. His health, never robust, 
began to give way. His physicians prescribed 



116 Classic French Course in English. 

mental diversion, and forced him into society. That 
medicine, taken at first with reluctance, proved dan- 
gerously delightful to Pascal's vivacious and suscep- 
tible spirit. His pious sister Jacqueline warned her 
brother that he was going too far. But he was still 
more effectively warned by an accident, in whicli he 
almost miraculously escaped from death. With- 
drawing from the world, he adopted a course of 
ascetic practices, in which he continued till he died — 
in his thirty-ninth year. He wore about his waist an 
iron girdle armed with sharp points ; and this he 
would press smartly with his elbow when he detected 
himself at fault in his spirit. 

Notwithstanding what Pascal did or attempted, 
worthy of fame, in science, it was his fortune to 
become chiefly renowned by literary achievement. 
His, in fact, would now be a half -forgotten name if 
he had not written the u Provincial Letters" and 
the " Thoughts." 

The " Provincial Letters " is an abbreviated title. 
The title in full originally was, u Letters written 
by Louis de Montalte to a Provincial, one of his 
friends, and to the Reverend Fathers, the Jesuits, 
on the subject of the morality and the policy of 
those Fathers." 

Of the " Provincial Letters," several English 
translations have been made. No one of these that 
we have been able to find, seems entirely satisfac- 
tory. There is an elusive quality to Pascal's style, 
and in losing this you seem to lose something of 



Pascal. 117 

Pascal's thought. For with Pascal the thought and 
the style penetrate each other inextricably and 
almost indistinguishably. You cannot print a smile, 
an inflection of the voice, a glance of the eye, a 
French shrug of the shoulders. And such modula- 
tions of the thought seem everywhere to lurk in the 
turns and phrases of Pascal's inimitable French. 
To translate them is impossible. 

Pascal is beyond question the greatest modern 
master of that indescribably delicate art in expres- 
sion, which, from its illustrious ancient exemplar, 
has received the name of the Socratic irony. With 
this fine weapon, in great part, it was, wielded like a 
magician's invisible wand, that Pascal did his mem- 
orable execution on the Jesuitical system of morals 
and casuistry, in the "Provincial Letters." In 
great part, we say ; for the flaming moral earnestness 
of the man could not abide only to play with his 
adversaries, to the end of the famous dispute. His 
lighter cimeter blade he flung aside before he had 
done, and, toward the last, brandished a sword that 
had weight as well as edge and temper. The skill 
that could halve a feather in the air with the sword 
of Salaclin was proved to be also strength that could 
cleave a suit of mail with the brand of Richard the 
Lion-hearted. 

It is universally acknowledged, that the French 
language has never in any hands been a more 
obedient instrument of intellectual power than it 
was in the hands of Pascal. He is rated the earli- 



118 Classic French Course in English. 

est writer to produce what may be called the final 
French prose. ct The creator of French style, " 
Yilleinain boldly calls him. Pascal's style remains 
to this day almost perfectly free from adhesions of 
archaism in diction and in construction. Pascal 
showed, as it were at once, what the French lan- 
guage was capable of doing in response to the 
demands of a master. It was the joint achievement 
of genius, of taste, and of skill, working together in 
an exquisite balance and harmony. 

lint let us be entirely frank. The u Provincial Let- 
ters " of Pascal are now, to the general reader, not so 
interesting as from their fame one would seem enti- 
tled to expect. You cannot read them intelligently 
without considerable previous study. You need to 
have learned, imperfectly, with labor, a thousand 
tilings that every contemporary reader of Pascal 
perfectly knew, as if by simply breathing, — the ne- 
cessary knowledge being then, so to speak, abroad in 
the air. Even thus, you cannot possibly derive that 
vivid delight from perusing in bulk the " Provincial 
Letters'* now, which the successive numbers of the 
series, appearing at brief irregular intervals, commu- 
nicated to the eagerly expecting French public, at a 
time when the topics discussed were topics of a pres- 
ent and pressing practical interest. Still, with what- 
ever disadvantage unavoidably attending, we must 
give our readers a taste of the quality of rascal's 
" Provincial Letters." 

We select a passage at the commencement of the 



Pascal. 119 

Seventh Letter. We use the translation of Mr. 
Thomas M'Crie. This succeeds very well in con- 
veying the sense, though it necessarily fails to convey 
either the vivacity or the eloquence, of the incompar- 
able original. The first occasion of the " Provincial 
Letters" was a championship proposed to Pascal 
to be taken up by him on behalf of his beleaguered 
and endangered friend Arnauld, the Port-Royalist. 
(Port Royal was a Roman-Catholic abbey, situated 
some eight miles to the south-west of Versailles, and 
therefore not very remote from Paris.) Arnauld 
was " for substance of doctrine " really a Calvinist, 
though he quite sincerely disclaimed being such ; and 
it was for his defence of Calvinism (under its ancient 
form of Augustinianism) that he was threatened, 
through Jesuit enmity, with condemnation for heret- 
ical opinion. The problem was to enlist the senti- 
ment of general society in his favor. The friends 
in council at Port Royal said to Pascal, " You must 
do this." Pascal said, " I will try." In a few 
days, the first letter of a series destined to such 
fame, was submitted for judgment to Port Royal 
and approved. It was printed — anonymously. The 
success was instantaneous and brilliant. A second 
letter followed, and a third. Soon, from strict per- 
sonal defence of Arnauld, the writer went on to take 
up a line of offence and aggression. He carried the 
war into Africa. He attacked the Jesuits as teachers 
of immoral doctrine. 

The plan of these later letters was, to have a Paris 



120 Classic French Course in English. 

gentleman write to a friend of his in the country (the 
" provincial "), detailing interviews held by him with 
a >Jesuit priest of the city. The supposed Parisian 
gentleman, in his interviews with the supposed Jesuit 
father, affects the air of a very simple-hearted seeker 
after truth. He represents himself as, by his inno- 
cent-seeming docility, leading his Jesuit teacher on 
to make the most astonishingly frank exposures of 
the secrets of the casuistical system held and taught 
by his order. 

The Seventh Letter tells the story of how Jesuit 
confessors were instructed to manage their penitents 
in a matter made immortally famous by the wit and 
genius of Pascal, the matter of tc directing the inten- 
tion. " There is nothing in the "Provincial Letters " 
better suited than this at the same time to interest 
the general reader, and to display the quality of these 
renowned productions. (We do not scruple to change 
our chosen translation «a little, at points where it 
seems to us susceptible of some easy improvement.) 
Remember it is an imaginary Parisian gentleman 
who now writes to a friend of his in the country : — 

"You know," he said, "that the ruling passion of per- 
sons in that rank of life [the rank of gentleman] is ' the point 
of honor/ which is perpetually driving them into acts of vio- 
lence apparently quite at variance with Christian piety; so 
that, in fact, they would he almost all of them excluded from 
our confessionals, had not our fathers relaxed a little from 
the strictness of religion, to accommodate themselves to the 
weakness of humanity. Anxious to keep on good terms, both 
with the gospel, by doing their duty to God, and with the 



Pascal. 121 

men of the world, by showing charity to their neighbor, they 
needed all the wisdom they possessed to devise expedients for 
so nicely adjusting matters as to permit these gentlemen to 
adopt the methods usually resorted to for vindicating their 
honor without wounding their consciences, and thus recon- 
cile things apparently so opposite to each other as piety and 
the point of honor.". . . 

" I should certainly [so replies M. Montalte, with the 
most exquisite irony couched under a cover of admiring sim- 
plicity], — I should certainly have considered the thing per- 
fectly impracticable, if I had not known, from what I have 
seen of your fathers, that they are capable of doing with ease 
what is impossible to other men. This led me to anticipate 
that they must have discovered some method for meeting the 
difficulty, — a method which I admire, even before knowing 
it, and which I pray you to explain to me." 

" Since that is your view of the matter," replied the monk, 
" I cannot refuse you. Know, then, that this marvellous 
principle is our grand method of directing the intention — 
the importance of which, in our moral system, is such, that 
I might almost venture to compare it with the doctrine of 
probability. You have had some glimpses of it in passing, 
from certain maxims which I mentioned to you. For exam- 
ple, when I was showing you how servants might execute 
certain troublesome jobs with a safe conscience, did you not 
remark that it was simply by diverting their intention from 
the evil to which they were accessory, to the profit which 
they might reap from the transaction ? Now, that is what 
we call directing the intention. You saw, too, that, were it 
not for a similar divergence of the mind, those who give 
money for benefices might be downright simoniacs. But I 
will now show you this grand method in all its glory, as it 
applies to the subject of homicide, — a crime which it justifies 
in a thousand instances, — in order that, from this startling 
result, you may form an idea of all that it is calculated to 
effect." 



122 Classic French Course in English. 

" I foresee already," said I, " that, according to this mode, 
every thing will be permitted: it will stick at nothing." 

" You always fly from the one extreme to the other," re- 
plied the monk ; " prithee avoid that habit. For just to 
show you that we are far from permitting every thing, let 
me tell you that we never suffer such a thing as a formal in- 
tention to sin, with the sole design of sinning ; and, if any 
person whatever should persist in having no other end but 
evil in the evil that he does, we break with him at once ; such 
conduct is diabolical. This holds true, without exception of 
age, sex, or rank. But when the person is not of such a 
wretched disposition as this, we try to put in practice our 
method of directing the intention, which consists in his pro- 
posing to himself, as the end of his actions, some allowable 
object. Not that we do not endeavor, as far as we can, to 
dissuade men from doing things forbidden ; but, when we can- 
not prevent the action, we at least purify the motive, and thus 
correct the viciousness of the mean by the goodness of the 
end. Such is the way in which our fathers have contrived to 
permit those acts of violence to which men usually resort in 
vindication of their honor. They have no more to do than 
to turn off their intention from the desire of vengeance, 
which is criminal, and direct it to a desire to defend their 
honor, which, according to us, is quite warrantable. And 
in this way our doctors discharge all their duty towards God 
and towards man. By permitting the action, they gratify 
the world ; and by purifying the intention, they give satis- 
faction to the gospel. This is a secret, sir, which was 
entirely unknown to the ancients ; the world is indebted for 
the discovery entirely to our doctors. You understand it 
now, I hope?" 

" Perfectly," was my reply. "To men you grant the 
outward material effect of the action, and to God you give 
the inward and spiritual movement of the intention ; and, 
by this equitable partition, you form an alliance between the 
laws of God and the laws of men. But, my dear sir, to be 



Pascal. 123 

frank with you, I can hardly trust your premises, and I sus- 
pect that your authors will tell another tale." 

" You do me injustice," rejoined the monk ; " I advance 
nothing but what I am ready to prove, and that by such a 
rich array of passages, that altogether their number, their 
authority, and their reasonings, will fill you with admira- 
tion. To show you, for example, the alliance which our 
fathers have formed between the maxims of the gospel and 
those of the world, by thus regulating the intention, let me 
refer you to Reginald. {In praxi., liv. xxi., num. 62, p. 260.) 
[These, and all that follow, are verifiable citations from real 
and undisputed Jesuit authorities, not to this day repudiated 
by that order.] ' Private persons are forbidden to avenge 
themselves ; for St. Paul says to the Romans (ch. 12th), 
" Recompense to no man evil for evil;" and Ecclesiasticus 
says (ch. 28th), " He that taketh vengeance shall draw on 
himself the vengeance of God, and his sins will not be for- 
gotten." Besides all that is said in the gospel about forgiv- 
ing offences, as in the 6th and 18th chapters of St. Matthew.' " 

"Well, father, if after that, he [Reginald] says any thing 
contrary to the Scripture, it will, at least, not be from lack 
of scriptural knowledge. Pray, how does he conclude ? " 

"You shall hear," he said. "From all this it appears 
that a military man may demand satisfaction on the spot 
from the person who has injured him — not, indeed, with 
the intention of rendering evil for evil, but with that of pre- 
serving his honor — non at malum pro malo reddat, sed ut 
conservat honorem. See you how carefully, because the 
Scripture condemns it, they guard against the intention of 
rendering evil for evil ? This is what they will tolerate on 
no account. Thus Lessius observes (De Just., liv. ii., c. 9, 
d. 12, n. 79), that, * If a man has received a blow on the face, 
he must on no account have an intention to avenge himself ; 
but he may lawfully have an intention to avert infamy, and 
may, with that view, repel the insult immediately, even at 
the point of the sword — etiam cum gladio. 9 So far are we 



124 Classic French Course in English. 

from permitting any one to cherish the design of taking ven- 
geance on his enemies, that our fathers will not allow any- 
even to wish their death — by a movement of hatred. ' If 
your enemy is disposed to injure you/ says Escobar, ' you 
have no right to wish his death, by a movement of hatred ; 
though you may, with a view to save yourself from harm.' 
So legitimate, indeed, is this wish, with such an intention, 
that our great Hurtado de Mendoza says that ' we may pray 
God to visit with speedy death those who are bent on persecut- 
ing us, if there is no other way of escaping from it.' " (In 
his book, De Spe, vol. ii., d. 15, sec. 4, 48.) 

" May it please your reverence," said I, " the Church has 
forgotten to insert a petition to that effect among her 
prayers." 

" They have not put every thing into the prayers that 
one may lawfully ask of God," answered the monk. " Be- 
sides, in the present case, the thing was impossible, for this 
same opinion is of more recent standing than the Breviary. 
You are not a good chronologist, friend. But, not to wander 
from the point, let me request your attention to the following 
passage, cited by Diana from Gaspar Hurtado (De Sub. 
Pecc, diff. 9 ; Diana, p. 5 ; tr. 14, r. 99), one of Escobar's 
f our-and-twenty fathers : ' An incumbent may, without any 
mortal sin, desire the decease of a life-renter on his benefice, 
and a son that of his father, and rejoice when it happens ; 
provided always it is for the sake of the profit that is to 
accrue from the event, and not from personal aversion. ' " 

" Good," cried I. " That is certainly a very happy hit, 
and I can easily see that the doctrine admits of a wide appli- 
cation. But yet there are certain cases, the solution of 
which, though of great importance for gentlemen, might 
present still greater difficulties." 

" Propose such, if you please, that we may see," said the 
monk. 

"Show me, with all your directing of the intention," re- 
turned I, " that it is allowable to fight a duel." 



Pascal. 125 

" Our great Hurtado de Mendoza," said the father, " will 
satisfy you on that point in a twinkling. ' If a gentleman,' 
says he, in a passage cited by Diana, ' who is challenged to 
fight a duel, is well known to have no religion, and if the 
vices to which he is openly and unscrupulously addicted, are 
such as would lead people to conclude, in the event of his 
refusing to fight, that he is actuated, not by the fear of God, 
but by cowardice, and induce them to say of him that he was 
a hen, and not a man — gallina, et non vir ; in that case he 
may, to save his honor, appear at the appointed spot — not, 
indeed, with the express intention of fighting a duel, but 
merely with that of defending himself, should the person 
who challenged him come there unjustly to attack him. His 
action in this case, viewed by itself, will be perfectly indiffer- 
ent ; for what moral evil is there in one's stepping into a 
field, taking a stroll in expectation of meeting a person, and 
defending one's self in the event of being attacked ? And 
thus the gentleman is guilty of no sin whatever ; for in fact, 
it cannot be called accepting a challenge at all, his intention 
being directed to other circumstances, and the acceptance of 
a challenge consisting in an express intention to fight, 
which we are supposing the gentleman never had.' " 

The humorous irony of Pascal, in the " Provincial 
Letters," plays like the diffusive sheen of an aurora 
borealis over the whole surface of the composition. 
It does not often deliver itself startlingly in sudden 
discharges as of lightning. You need to school your 
sense somewhat, not to miss a fine effect now and 
then. Consider the broadness and coarseness in 
pleasantry, that, before Pascal, had been common, 
almost universal, in controversy, and you will better 
understand what a creative touch it was of genius, 
of feeling, and of taste, that brought into literature 



126 Classic French Course in English. 

the far more than Attic, the ineffable Christian, 
purity of that wit and humor in the u Provincial Let- 
ters " which will make these writings live as long as 
men anywhere continue to read the productions of 
past ages. Erasmus, perhaps, came the nearest of 
all modern predecessors to anticipating the purified 
pleasantry of Pascal. 

It will be interesting and instructive to see Pascal's 
own statement of his reasons for adopting the ban- 
tering style which he did in the "Provincial Letters/' 
as well as of the sense of responsibility to be faithful 
and fair, under which he wrote. Pascal says : — 

I have been asked why I employed a pleasant, jocose, and 
diverting style. I reply ... I thought it a duty to write so 
as to be comprehended by women and men of the world, 
that they might know the danger of their maxims and prop- 
ositions which were then universally propagated. ... I 
have been asked, lastly, if I myself read all the books which 
I quoted. I answer, No. If I had done so, I must have 
passed a great part of my life in reading very bad books ; 
but I read Escobar twice through, and I employed some of 
my friends in reading the others. But I did not make use 
of a single passage without having myself read it in the 
book from which it is cited, without having examined the 
subject of which it treats, and without having read what 
went before and followed, so that I might run no risk of 
quoting an objection as an answer, which would have been 
blameworthy and unfair. 

Of the wit of the " Provincial Letters," their wit 
and their controversial effectiveness, the specimens 
given will have afforded readers some approximate 



Pascal. 127 

idea. We must deny ourselves the gratification of 
presenting a brief passage, which we had selected 
and translated for the purpose, to exemplify from 
the same source Pascal's serious eloquence. It was 
Voltaire who said of these productions : " Moli&re's 
best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the 
compositions of Bossuet in sublimity." Something 
of Bossuet's sublimity, or of a sublimity perhaps 
finer than Bossuet' s, our readers will discover in 
citations to follow from the " Thoughts." 

Pascal's " Thoughts," the printed book, has a 
remarkable history. It was a posthumous publica- 
tion. The author died, leaving behind him a con- 
siderable number of detached fragments of compo- 
sition, first jottings of thought on a subject that had 
long occupied his mind. These precious manuscripts 
were almost undecipherable. The writer had used 
for his purpose any chance scrap of paper, — old 
wrapping, for example, or margin of letter, — that, at 
the critical moment of happy conception, was nearest 
his hand. Sentences, words even, were often left 
unfinished. There was no coherence, no sequence, 
no arrangement. It was, however, among his friends 
perfectly well understood that Pascal for years had 
meditated a work on religion designed to demon- 
strate the truth of Christianity. For this he had 
been thinking arduously. Fortunately he had even, 
in a memorable conversation, sketched his project 
at some length to his Port Royal friends. With so 
much, scarcely more, in the way of clew, to guide 



128 Classic French Course in English. 

their editorial work, these friends prepared and 
issued a volume of Pascal's "Thoughts." With 
the most loyal intentions, the Port-Royalists un- 
wisely edited too much. They pieced out incom- 
pletenesses, they provided clauses or sentences of 
connection, they toned down expressions deemed 
too bold, they improved Pascal's style ! After 
having suffered such things from his friends, the 
posthumous Pascal, later, fell into the hands of an 
enemy. The infidel Condorcet published an edition 
of the "Thoughts." Whereas the Port-Royalists 
had suppressed to placate the Jesuits, Condorcet 
suppressed to please the " philosophers." Between 
those on the one side, and these on the other, Pascal's 
" Thoughts " had experienced what might well have 
killed any production of the human mind that could 
die. It was not till near the middle of the present 
century that Cousin called the attention of the 
world to the fact that we had not yet, but that 
we* still might have, a true edition of Pascal's 
"Thoughts." M. Faugere took the hint, and con- 
sulting the original manuscripts, preserved in the 
national library at Paris, produced, with infinite 
editorial labor, almost two hundred years after the 
thinker's death, the first satisfactory edition of Pas- 
cal's "Thoughts." Since Faugere, M. Havet has 
also published an edition of Pascal's works entire, 
by him now first adequately annotated and explained. 
The arrangement of the " Thoughts " varies in 
order, according to the varying judgment of editors. 



Pascal 129 

We use, for our extracts, a current translation, which 
we modify at our discretion, by comparison of the 
original text as given in M. Havet's elaborate work. 
Our first extract is a passage in which the writer 
supposes a sceptic of the more shallow, trifling sort, 
to speako This sceptic represents his own state of 
mind in the following strain as of soliloquy : — ■ 

I I do not know who put me into the world, nor what the 
world is, nor what I am myself. I am in a frightful igno- 
rance of all things. I do not know what my body is, what 
my senses are, what my soul is, and that very part of me 
which thinks what I am saying, which reflects upon every 
thing and upon itself, and is no better acquainted with itself 
than with any thing else. I see these appalling spaces of 
the universe which enclose me, and I find myself tethered 
in one corner of this immense expansion without knowing 
why I am stationed in this place rather than in another, or 
why this moment of time which is given me to live is as- 
signed me at this point rather than at another of the whole 
eternity that has preceded me, and of that which is to fol- 
low me. 

I I see nothing but infinities on every side, which enclose 
me like an atom, and like a shadow which endures but for 
an instant, and returns no more. 

6 All that I know, is that I am soon to die ; but what I am 
most ignorant of, is that very death which I am unable to 
avoid. 

1 As I know not whence I came, so I know not whither I 
go ; and I know only, that in leaving this world I fall for- 
ever either into nothingness or into the hands of an angry 
God, without knowing which of these two conditions is to 
be eternally my lot. Such is my state, — full of misery, of 
weakness, and of uncertainty. 

i And from all this I conclude, that I ought to pass all the 



loO Classic French Course in English* 

days of my life without a thought of trying to learn what 
is to befall me hereafter. Perhaps in my doubts l might 
find some enlightenment; but 1 am unwilling to take the 
trouble, or go a single slop in search of it; and, treating 

With contempt those who perplex themselves with such 
solicitude, my purpose is to go forward without forethought 
and without tear to try the great event, and passively to 
approach death in uncertainty of the eternity of my future 
condition.' 

Who would desire to have for a friend a man who dis- 
courses in this manner ? Who would select such a one for 
the confidant of his affairs'? Who would have recourse to 
such a ono in his afflictions ? And, in tine, for what use of 
life could such a man be destined ? 



The central thought on which the projected apolo- 
getic of Pascal was to revolve as on a pivot, is the 
contrasted greatness and wretchedness of man, — 
with Divine Revelation, in its doctrine oi' a fall on 
man's part from original nobleness, supplying the 
needed link, and the only link conceivable, of expla- 
nation, to unite the one with the other, the human 
greatness with the human wretchedness. This con- 
trast of dignity and disgrace should constantly be 
in the mind of the reader of the "Thoughts" of 
Pascal. It will often be found to throw a very 
necessary light upon the meaning of the separate 
fragments that make up the series. 

We now present a brief fragment asserting, with 
vivid metaphor, at the same time the fragility of 
man's frame and the majesty of man's nature. 
This is a very famous Thought : — 



Pascal. 131 

Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a 
thinking reed. It is not necessary that the entire universe 
arm itself to crush him. An exhalation, a drop of water, 
suffices to kill him. But were the universe to crush him, 
man would still be more noble than that which kills him, 
because he knows that he is dying, and knows the advantage 
that the universe has over him. The universe knows 
nothing of it. 

Our whole dignity consists, then, in thought. 

One is reminded of the memorable saying of a 
celebrated philosopher: " In the universe there is 
nothing great but man ; in man there is nothing 
great but mind." 

What a sudden, almost ludicrous, reduction in 
scale, the greatness of Csesar, as conqueror, is made 
to suffer when looked at in the way in which Pascal 
asks you to look at it in the following Thought! 
(Remember that Caesar, when he began fighting for 
universal empire, was fifty-one years of age :) — 

Csesar was too old, it seems to me, to amuse himself with 
conquering the world. This amusement was well enough 
for Augustus or Alexander ; they were young people, whom 
it is difficult to stop ; but Caesar ought to have been more 
mature. 

That is as if you should reverse the tube of your 
telescope, with the result of seeing the object ob- 
served made smaller instead of larger. 

The following sentence might be a Maxim of 
La Rochefoucauld. Pascal was, no doubt, a debtor 
to him as well as to Montaigne : — 



132 Classic French Course in English. 

I lay it down as a fact, that, if all men knew what others 
say of them, there would not be four friends in the world. 

Here is one of the most current of Pascal's say- 
ings : — 

Kivers are highways that move on and bear us whither 
we wish to go. 

The following "Thought" condenses the sub- 
stance of the book proposed, into three short sen- 
tences : — 

The knowledge of God without that of our misery produces 
pride. The knowledge of our misery without that of God 
gives despair. The knowledge of Jesus Christ is intermedi- 
ate, because therein we find God and our misery. 

The prevalent seeming severity and intellectual 
coldness of Pascal's " Thoughts" yield to a touch 
from the heart, and become pathetic, in such utter- 
ances as the following, supposed to be addressed by 
the Saviour to the penitent seeking to be saved : — 

Console thyself ; thou wouldst not seek me if thou hadst 
not found me. 

I thought on thee in my agony ; such drops of blood I 
shed for thee. 

It is austerity again, but not unjust austerity, that 
speaks as follows : — 

Religion is a thing so great that those who would not take 
the pains to seek it if it is obscure, should be deprived of it. 
What do they complain of, then, if it is such that they could 
find it by seeking it ? 



Pascal. 133 

But we must take our leave of Pascal. His was 
a suffering as well as an aspiring spirit. He suf- 
fered because he aspired. But, at least, he did not 
suffer long. He aspired himself quickly away. 
Toward the last he wrought at a problem in his first 
favorite study, that of mathematics, and left behind 
him, as a memorial of his later life, a remarkable 
result of investigation on the curve called the cycloid. 
During his final illness he pierced himself through 
with many sorrows, — unnecessary sorrows, sorrows, 
too, that bore a double edge, hurting not only him, 
but also his kindred, — in practising, from mistaken 
religious motives, a hard repression upon his natural 
instinct to love, and to welcome love. He thought 
that God should be all, the creature nothing. The 
thought was half true, but it was half false. God 
should, indeed, be all. But, in God, the creature 
also should be something. 

In French history, — we may say, in the history of 
the world, — if there are few brighter, there also are 
few purer, fames than the fame of Pascal. 



134 Classic French Course in English. 
IX. 

MADAME DE SEVIGN6. 
1626-1696. 

Of Madame de Sevign6, if it were permitted here 
to make a pun and a paradox, one might justly and 
descriptively say that she was not a woman of letters, 
but only a woman of — letters. For Madame de 
Sevigne's addiction to literature was not at all that 
of an author by profession. She simply wrote ad- 
mirable private letters, in great profusion, and 
became famous thereby. 

Madame de Sevigne's fame is partly her merit, 
but it is also partly her good fortune. She was 
rightly placed to be what she was. This will appear 
from a sketch of her life, and still more from speci- 
mens to be exhibited of her own epistolary writing. 

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal was her maiden name. 
She was born a baroness. She was married, young, 
a marchioness. First early left an orphan, she was 
afterward early left a widow, — not too early, how- 
ever, to have become the mother of two children, 
a son and a daughter. The daughter grew to be the 
life-long idol of the widowed mother's heart. The 
letters she wrote to this daughter, married, and living 
remote from her, compose the greater part of that 
voluminous epistolary production by which Madame 



Madame de Sevigne. 135 

de Sevigne became, without her ever aiming at such 
a result, or probably ever thinking of it, one of the 
classics of the French language. 

Madame de Sevigne was wealthy as orphan 
heiress, and she should have been wealthy as widow. 
But her husband was profligate, and he wasted her 
substance. She turned out to be a thoroughly 
capable woman of affairs who managed her property 
well. During her long and stainless widowhood — 
her husband fell in a shameful duel when she was 
but twenty-five years old, and she lived to be 
seventy — she divided her time between her estate, 
The Rocks, in Brittany, and her residence in Paris. 
This period was all embraced within the protracted 
reign of Louis XIV., perhaps, upon the whole, the 
most memorable age in the history of France. 

Beautiful, and, if not brilliantly beautiful, at 
least brilliantly witty, Madame de Sevigne was 
virtuous — in that chief sense of feminine virtue — 
amid an almost universal empire of profligacy around 
her. Her social advantages were unsurpassed, and 
her social success was equal to her advantages. She 
had the woman courtier's supreme triumph in being 
once led out to dance by the king — her own junior 
by a dozen years — no vulgar king, remember, but 
the c ' great ' ' Louis XIV. Her cynical cousin, himself 
a writer of power, who had been repulsed in dishon- 
orable proffers of love by the young marchioness 
during the lifetime of her husband, — we mean Count 
Bussy, — says, in a scurrilous work of his, that Ma- 



136 Classic French Course in English. 

dame de S£vigne remarked, on returning to her seat 
after her dancing-bout with the king, that Louis pos- 
sessed great qualities, and would certainly obscure 
the lustre of all his predecessors. " I could not 
help laughing in her face," the ungallant cousin 
declared, " seeing what had produced this pane- 
gyric/ ' Probably, indeed, the young woman was 
pleased. But, whatever may have been her faults 
or her follies, nothing can rob Madame de S6vign6 
of the glory that is hers, in having been strong 
enough in womanly and motherly honor to preserve, 
against many dazzling temptations, amid general 
bad example, and even under malignant aspersions, 
a chaste and spotless name. When it is added, that, 
besides access to the royal court itself, this gifted 
woman enjoyed the familiar acquaintance of La 
Rochefoucauld and other high-bred wits, less famous, 
not a few, enough will have been said to show 
that her position was such as to give her talent its 
best possible chance. The French history of the 
times of Louis XIV. is hinted in glimpses the most 
vivid and the most suggestive, throughout the whole 
series of the letters. 

We owe it to our readers (and to Madame de 
Sevigne no less) first of all to let them see a speci- 
men of the affectionate adulation that this French 
woman of rank, and of fashion, literally in almost 
every letter of hers, effuses on her daughter, — a 
daughter who, by the way, seems very languidly to 
have responded to such demonstrations : — - 



Madame de SSvignS. 137 

The Rocks, Sunday, June 28, 1671. 

You have amply made up to me my late losses ; I have 
received two letters from you which have filled me with 
transports of joy. The pleasure I take in reading them is 
beyond all imagination. If I have in any way contributed 
to the improvement of your style I did it in the thought that 
I was laboring for the pleasure of others, not for my own. 
But Providence, who has seen fit to separate us so often, 
and to p|^ce us at such immense distances from each other, 
has repaid me a little for the privation in the charms of 
your correspondence, and still more in the satisfaction you 
express in your situation, and the beauty of your castle; you 
represent it to me with an air of grandeur and magnificence 
that enchants me. I once saw a similar account of it by 
the first Madame de Grignan; but I little thought at that 
time, that all these beauties were one day to be at your 
command. I am very much obliged to you for having 
given me so particular an account of it. If I could be tired 
in reading your letters, it would not only betray a very 
bad taste in me, but would likewise show that I could 
have very little love or friendship for you. Divest yourself 
of the dislike you have taken to circumstantial details. 
I have often told you, and you ought yourself to feel the 
truth of this remark, that they are as dear to us from those 
we love, as they are tedious and disagreeable from others. 
If they are displeasing to us, it is only from the indifference 
we feel for those who write them. Admitting this observa- 
tion to be true, I leave you to judge what pleasure yours 
afford me. It is a fine thing, truly, to play the great lady, 
as you do at present. 

Conceive the foregoing multiplied by the whole 
number of the separate letters composing the cor- 
respondence, and you will have no exaggerated idea 
of the display that Madame de S6vigne makes of her 



138 Classic French Course in English. 

regard for her daughter. This regard was a passion, 
morbid, no doubt, b}^ excess, and, even at that, ex- 
travagantly demonstrated ; but it was fundamentally 
sincere. Madame de Sevigne* idealized her absent 
daughter, and literally " loved but only her." We 
need not wholly admire such maternal affection. 
But we should not criticise it too severely. 

We choose next a marvellously vivid " instanta- 
neous view," in words, of a court afternoon and 
evening at Versailles. This letter, too, is addressed 
to the daughter — Madame de Grignan, by her mar- 
ried name. It bears date, "Paris, Wednesday, 
29th July." The year is 1676, and the writer is 
just fifty : — 

I was at Versailles last Saturday with the Villarses. . . . 
At three the king, the queen, Monsieur [eldest brother to the 
king], Madame [that brother's wife], Mademoiselle [that 
brother's eldest unmarried daughter], and every thing else 
which is royal, together with Madame de Montespan [the 
celebrated mistress of the king] and train, and all the 
courtiers, and all the ladies, — all, in short, which consti- 
tutes the court of France, is assembled in the beautiful 
apartment of the king's, which you remember. All is fur- 
nished divinely, all is magnificent. Such a thing as heat is 
unknown ; you pass from one place to another without the 
slightest pressure. A game at reversis [the description is of 
a gambling scene, in which Dangeau figures as a cool and 
skilful gamester] gives the company a form and a settlement. 
The king and Madame de Montespan keep a bank together ; 
different tables are occupied by Monsieur, the queen, and 
Madame de Soubise, Dangeau and party, Langlee and party. 
Everywhere you see heaps of louis d'ors ; they have no other 



Madame de Sevigne. 139 

counters. I saw Dangeau play, and thought what fools we 
all were beside him. He dreams of nothing but what con- 
cerns the game ; he wins where others lose ; he neglects 
nothing, profits by every thing, never has his attention 
diverted ; in short, his science bids defiance to chance. Two 
hundred thousand francs in ten days, a hundred thousand 
crowns in a month, these are the pretty memorandums he 
puts down in his pocket-book. He was kind enough to say 
that I was partners with him, so that I got an excellent seat. ■ 
I made my obeisance to the king, as you told me ; and he 
returned it as if I had been young and handsome. . . . The 
duke said a thousand kind things without minding a word 
he uttered. Marshal de Lorges attacked me in the name of 
the Chevalier de Grignan ; in short, tutti quanti [the whole 
company]. You know what it is to get a word from every- 
body you meet. Madame de Montespan talked to me of 
Bourbon, and asked me how I liked Yichi, and whether the 
place did me good. She said that Bourbon, instead of curing 
a pain in one of her knees, injured both. . . . Her size 
is reduced by a good half, and yet her complexion, her eyes, 
and her lips, are as fine as ever. She was dressed all in 
French point, her hair in a thousand ringlets, the two side 
ones hanging low on her cheeks, black ribbons on her head, 
pearls (the same that belonged to Madame del'Hopital), the 
loveliest diamond earrings, three or four bodkins — nothing 
else on the head ; in short, a triumphant beauty, worthy the 
admiration of all the foreign ambassadors. She was accused 
of preventing the whole French nation from seeing the king ; 
she has restored him, you see, to their eyes ; and you cannot 
conceive the joy it has given all the world, and the splendor 
it has thrown upon the court. This charming confusion, 
without confusion, of all which is the most select, continues 
from three till six. If couriers arrive, the king retires a 
moment to read the despatches, and returns. There is 
always some music going on, to which he listens, and which 
has an excellent effect. He talks with such of the ladies as 



140 Classic French Course in English. 

are accustomed to enjoy that honor. ... At six the car- 
riages are at the door. The king is in one of them with 
Madame de Montespan, Monsieur and Madame de Thianges, 
and honest d'Heudicourt in a fool's paradise on the stool. 
You know how these open carriages are made ; they do not 
sit face to face, but all looking the same way. The queen 
occupies another with the princess ; and the rest come flock- 
ing after, as it may happen. There are then gondolas on 
the canal, and music ; and at ten they come back, and then 
there is a play ; and twelve strikes, and they go to supper ; 
and thus rolls round the Saturday. If I were to tell you 
how often you were asked after, how many questions were 
put to me without waiting for answers, how often I neg- 
lected to answer, how little they cared, and how much less 
I did, you would see the iniqaa corte [wicked court] before ' 
you in all its perfection. However, it never was so pleasant 
before, and everybody wishes it may last. 

There is your picture. Picture, pure and simple, 
it is — comment none, least of all, moralizing com- 
ment. The wish is sighed by " everybody/' that 
such pleasant things may "last." Well, they did 
last the writer's time. But meanwhile the French 
revolution was a-preparing. A hundred years later 
it will come, with its terrible reprisals. 

We have gone away from the usual translations 
to find the foregoing extract in an article published 
forty years ago and more, in the " Edinburgh Re- 
view." Again we draw from the same source — 
this time, the description of a visit paid by a com- 
pany of grand folks, of whom the writer of the letter 
was one, to an iron-foundery : — 



Madame de Sevigne. 141 

Friday, 1st Oct. (1677). 
Yesterday evening at Cone, we descended into a veritable 
hell, the true forges of Vulcan. Eight or ten Cyclops were 
at work, forging, not arms for ^Eneas, but anchors for ships. 
You never saw strokes redoubled so justly, nor with so 
admirable a cadence. We stood in the middle of four fur- 
naces ; and the demons came passing about us, all melting 
in sweat, with pale faces, wild-staring eyes, savage mus- 
taches, and hair long and black, — a sight enough to frighten 
less well-bred folks than ourselves. As for me, I could not 
comprehend the possibility of refusing any thing which these 
gentlemen, in their hell, might have chosen to exact. We 
got out at last, by the help of a shower of silver, with which 
we took care to refresh their souls, and facilitate our exit. 

Once more : — 

Paris, 29th November (1679). 

I have been to the wedding of Madame de Louvois. How 
shall I describe it ? Magnificence, illuminations, all France, 
dresses all gold and brocade, jewels, braziers full of fire, and 
stands full of flowers, confusions of carriages, cries out of 
doors, lighted torches, pushings back, people run over; in 
short, a whirlwind, a distraction ; questions without an- 
swers, compliments without knowing what is said, civilities 
without knowing who is spoken to, feet entangled in trains. 
From the midst of all this, issue inquiries after your health, 
which not being answered as quick as lightning, the 
inquirers pass on, contented to remain in the state of igno- 
rance and indifference in which they [the inquiries] were 
made. O vanity of vanities ! Pretty little De Mouchy has 
had the small-pox. vanity, et csetera ! 

Yet again. The gay writer has been sobered, 
perhaps hurt, by a friend's frankly writing to her, 
" You are old." To her daughter : — 



142 Classic French Course in English. 

So you were struck with the expression of Madame de la 
Fayette , blended with so much friendship. 'Twas a truth, 
I own, which I ought to have borne in mind; and yet I 
must confess it astonished me, for I do not yet perceive in 
myself any such decay. Nevertheless, I cannot help making 
many reflections and calculations, and I find the conditions 
of life hard enough. It seems to me that I have been 
dragged, against my will, to the fatal period when old age 
must be endured ; I see it ; I have come to it ; and I 
would fain, if I could help it, not go any farther ; not ad- 
vance a step more in the road of infirmities, of pains, of 
losses of memory, of disfigurements ready to do me outrage ; 
and I hear a voice which says, " You must go on in spite of 
yourself ; or, if you will not go on, you must die;" and 
this is another extremity from which nature revolts. Such 
is the lot, however, of all who advance beyond middle life. 
What is their resource ? To think of the will of God and 
of universal law, and so restore reason to its place, and be 
patient. Be you, then, patient accordingly, my dear child, 
and let not your affection soften into such tears as reason 
must condemn. 

She dates a letter, and recalls that the day was 
the anniversary of an event in her life : — 

Paris, Friday, Feb. 5, 1672. 
This day thousand years I was married. 

Here is a passage with power in it. The great war 
minister of Louis has died. Madame de Sevigne 
was now sixty-five years old. The letter is to her 
cousin Coulanges : — 

I am so astonished at the news of the sudden death of M. 
de Louvois, that I am at a loss how to speak of it. Dead, 
however, he is, this great minister, this potent being, who 



Madame de Sevigne. 143 

occupied so great a place; whose me (le moi), as M. Nicole 
says, had so wide a dominion; who was the centre of so 
many orbs. What affairs had he not to manage! what 
designs, what projects, what secrets! what interests to 
unravel, what wars to undertake, what intrigues, what 
noble games at chess to play and to direct ! Ah ! my God, 
grant me a little time ; I want to give check to the Duke of 
Savoy — checkmate to the Prince of Orange. No, no, you 
shall not have a moment, not a single moment. Are events 
like these to be talked of? Not they. We must reflect 
upon them in our closets. 

A glimpse of Bourclaloue : — 

Ah, that Bourdaloue! his sermon on the Passion was, 
they say, the most perfect thing of the kind that can be 
imagined; it was the same he preached last year, but 
revised and altered with the assistance of some of his 
friends, that it might be wholly inimitable. How can one 
love God, if one never hears him properly spoken of ? You 
must really possess a greater portion of grace than others. 

A distinguished caterer or steward, a gentleman 
described as possessing talent enough to have gov- 
erned a province, commits suicide on a professional 
point of honor: — 

Paris, Sunday, April 26, 1671. 

I have just learned from Moreuil, of what passed at Chan- 
tilly with regard to poor Yatel. I wrote to you last Friday 
that he had stabbed himself — these are the particulars of 
the affair: The king arrived there on Thursday night; the 
walk, and the collation, which was served in a place set 
apart for the purpose, and strewed with jonquils, were just 
as they should be. Supper was served; but there was no 
roast meat at one or two of the tables, on account of Yatel's 



144 Classic French Course in English. 

having been obliged to provide several dinners more than 
were expected. This affected his spirits ; and he was heard 
to say several times, " I have lost my honor! I cannot bear 
this disgrace! " " My head is quite bewildered," said he to 
Gourville. " I have not had a wink of sleep these twelve 
nights; I wish you would assist me in giving orders." 
Gourville did all he could to comfort and assist him, but 
the failure of the roast meat (which, however, did not 
happen at the king's table, but at some of the other twenty- 
five) was always uppermost with him. Gourville men- 
tioned it to the prince [Conde, the great Conde, the king's 
host], who went directly to Yatel's apartment, and said to 
him, " Every thing is extremely well conducted, Vatel; 
nothing could be more admirable than his Majesty's 
supper." "Your highness' s goodness," replied he, "over- 
whelms me; I am sensible that there was a deficiency of 
roast meat at two tables." "Not at all," said the 
prince; "do not perplex yourself, and all will go well." 
Midnight came; the fireworks did not succeed; they were 
covered with a thick cloud; they cost sixteen thousand 
francs. At four o'clock in the morning Vatel went round 
and found everybody asleep; he met one of the under- 
purveyors, who was just come in with only two loads of 
fish. "What!" said he, "is this all?" "Yes, sir," 
said the man, not knowing that Yatel had despatched other 
people to all the seaports around. Yatel waited for some 
time; the other purveyors did not arrive; his head grew 
distracted; he thought there was no more fish to be had. 
He flew to Gourville: "Sir," said he, "I cannot outlive 
this disgrace." Gourville laughed at him. Yatel, however, 
went to his apartment, and setting the hilt of his sword 
against the door, after two ineffectual attempts, succeeded, 
in the third, in forcing his sword through his heart. At 
that instant the couriers arrived with the fish ; Yatel was 
inquired after to distribute it. They ran to his apartment, 
knocked at the door, but received no answer; upon which 



Madame de SevignS. 145 

they broke it open, and found him weltering in his blood. 
A messenger was immediately despatched to acquaint the 
prince with what had happened, who was like a man in 
despair. The Duke wept, for his Burgundy journey de- 
pended upon Vatel 

The italics here are our own. We felt that we 
must use them. 

Is it not all pathetic? But how exquisitely 
characteristic of the nation and of the times ! 
"Poor Vatel," is the extent to which Madame de 
Sevigne allows herself to go in sympathy. Her 
heart never bleeds very freely — for anybody except 
her daughter. Madame de Sevigne' s heart, indeed, 
we grieve to fear, was somewhat hard. 

In another letter, after a long strain as worldly 
as any one could wish to see, this lively woman thus 
touches, with a sincerity as unquestionable as the 
levity is, on the point of personal religion : — 

But, my dear child, the greatest inclination I have at 
present is to be a little religious. I plague La Mousse 
about it every day. I belong neither to God nor to the 
devil. I am quite weary of such a situation; though, 
between you and me, I look upon it as the most natural one 
in the world. I am not the devil's, because I fear God, and 
have at the bottom a principle of religion; then, on the 
other hand, I am not properly God's, because his law 
appears hard and irksome to me, and I cannot bring myself 
to acts of self-denial ; so that altogether I am one of those 
called lukewarm Christians, the great number of which does 
not in the least surprise me, for I perfectly understand their 
sentiments, and the reasons that influence them. However, 



146 Classic French Course in English, 

we are told that this is a state highly displeasing to God ; if 
so, we must get out of it. Alas ! this is the difficulty. Was 
ever any thing so mad as I am, to be thus eternally pestering 
you with my rhapsodies ? 

Madame de S6vign6 involuntarily becomes a 
maxim-maker : — 

The other day I made a maxim off-hand, without once 
thinking of it; and I liked it so well that I fancied I had 
taken it out of M. de la Rochefoucauld's. Pray tell me 
whether it is so or not, for in that case my memory is more 
to be praised than my judgment. I said, with all the ease 
in the world, that " ingratitude begets reproach, as ac- 
knowledgment begets new favors." Pray, where did this 
come from ? Have I read it ? Did I dream it ? Is it my 
own idea ? Nothing can be truer than the thing itself, nor 
than that I am totally ignorant how I came by it. I found 
it properly arranged in my brain, and at the end of my 
tongue. 

The partial mother lets her daughter know whom 
the maxim was meant for. She says, "It is in- 
tended for your brother.' ' This young fellow had, 
we suspect, been first earning his mother's "re- 
proaches" for spendthrift habits, and then getting 
more money from her by " acknowledgment." 

She hears that son of hers read " some chapters 
out of Rabelais," "which were enough," she de- 
clares, " to make us die with laughing." " I cannot 
affect," she says, " a prudery which is not natural 
to me." No, indeed, a prude this woman was not. 
She had the strong aesthetic stomach of her time. 
It is queer to have Rabelais rubbing cheek and jowl 



Madame de Sevigne. 147 

with Nicole ("We are going to begin a moral treatise 
of Nicole's ") , a severe Port-Royalist, in one and the 
same letter. But this is French ; above all, it is 
Madame de Sevigne\ By the way, she and her 
friends, first and last, " die " a thousand jolly deaths 
tk with laughing." 

A contemporary allusion to " Tartuffe," with 
more French manners implied : — 

The other day La Biglesse played Tartuffe to the life. 
Being at table, she happened to tell a fib about some trifle or 
other, which I noticed, and told her of it ; she cast her eyes 
to the ground, and with a very demure air, " Yes, indeed, 
' madam," said she, " I am the greatest liar in the world ; I am 
very much obliged to you for telling me of it." We all 
burst out a-laughing, for it was exactly the tone of Tartuffe, — 
" Yes, brother, I am a wretch, a vessel of iniquity." 

M. de La Rochefoucauld appears often by name 
in the letters. Here he appears anonymously by 
his effect : — 

" Warm affections are never tranquil " ; a maxim. 

Not a very sapid bit of gnomic wisdom, certainly. 
We must immediately make up to our readers, on 
Madame de Sevigne' s behalf, for the insipidity of the 
foregoing " maxim " of hers, by giving here two or 
three far more sententious excerpts from the letters, 
excerpts collected by another : — 

There may be so great a weight of obligation that there is 
no way of being delivered from it but by ingratitude. 

Long sicknesses wear out grief, and long hopes wear out 

joy. 



148 Classic French Course in English. 

Shadow is never long taken for substance ; you must be, 
if you would appear to be. The world is not unjust long. 

Madame de Sevigne* makes a confession, which 
will comfort readers who may have experienced the 
same difficulty as that of which she speaks : — 

I send you M. de Rochefoucauld's " Maxims," revised and 
corrected, with additions ; it is a present to you from him- 
self. Some of them I can make shift to guess the meaning 
of ; but there are others that, to my shame be it spoken, I 
cannot understand at all. God knows how it will be with 
you. 

What was it changed this woman's mood to seri- 
ous? She could not have been hearing Massillon's 
celebrated sermon on the " fewness of the elect," for 
Massillon was yet only a boy of nine years ; she may 
have been reading Pascal's "Thoughts," — Pascal 
had been dead ten years, and the u Thoughts " had 
been published ; or she may have been listening to 
one of those sifting, heart-searching discourses of 
Bourdaloue, — the date of her letter is March 16, 
1672, and during the Lent of that year Bourdaloue 
preached at Versailles, — when she wrote sombrely as 
follows : — 

You ask me if I am as fond of life as ever. I must own 
to you that I experience mortifications, and severe ones too ; 
but I am still unhappy at the thoughts of death ; I consider 
it so great a misfortune to see the termination of all my 
pursuits, that I should desire nothing better, if it were prac- 
ticable, than to begin life again. I find myself engaged in a 
scene of confusion and trouble ; I was embarked in life with- 



Madame de SevignS. 149 

out my own consent, and know I must leave it again ; this 
distracts me, for how shall I leave it ? In what manner ? 
By what door ? At what time ? In what disposition ? Am 
I to suffer a thousand pains and torments that will make me 
die in a state of despair ? Shall I lose my senses ? Am I to 
die by some sudden accident ? How shall I stand with God ? 
What shall I have to offer to him ? Will fear and necessity 
make my peace with him ? Shall I have no other sentiment 
but that of fear ? What have I to hope ? Am I worthy of 
heaven ? Or have I deserved the torments of hell ? Dread- 
ful alternative ! Alarming uncertainty ! Can there be 
greater madness than to place our eternal salvation in un- 
certainty ? Yet what is more natural, or can be more easily 
accounted for, than the foolish manner in which I have spent 
my life ? I am frequently buried in thoughts of this nature, 
and then death appears so dreadful to me that I hate life 
more for leading me to it, than I do for all the thorns that 
are strewed in its way. You will ask me, then, if I would 
wish to live forever ? Far from it ; but, if I had been con- 
sulted, I would very gladly have died in my nurse's arms ; it 
would have spared me many vexations', and would have in- 
sured heaven to me at a very easy rate ; but let us talk of 
something else. 

A memorable sarcasm saved for us by Madame de 
Sevigne, at the very close of one of her letters : — 

Guillenagues said yesterday that Pelisson abused the priv- 
ilege men have of being ugly. 

Eeaders familiar with Dickens's " Tale of Two 
Cities," will recognize in the following narrative a 
state of society not unlike that described by the 
novelist as immediately preceding the French Rev- 
olution : — 



150 Classic French Course in English. 

The Archbishop of Kheims, as he returned yesterday from 
St. Germain, met with a curious adventure. He drove at his 
usual rate, like a whirlwind. If he thinks himself a great 
man, his servants think him still greater. They passed 
through Nanterre, when they met a man on horseback, and 
in an insolent tone bid him clear the way. The poor man 
used his utmost endeavors to avoid the danger that threat- 
ened him, but his horse proved unmanageable. To make 
short of it, the coach-and-six turned them both topsy-turvy ; 
but at the same time the coach, too, was completely over- 
turned. In an instant the horse and the man, instead of 
amusing themselves with having their limbs broken, rose 
almost miraculously ; the man remounted, and galloped 
away, and is galloping still, for aught I know ; while the ser- 
vants, the archbishop's coachman, and the archbishop him- 
self at the head of them, cried out, " Stop that villain, stop 
him ! thrash him soundly!" The rage of the archbishop 
was so great, that afterward, in relating the adventure, he 
said, if he could have caught the rascal, he would have broke 
all his bones, and cut off both his ears. 

If such things were clone by the aristocracy — 
and the spiritual aristocracy at that ! — in the green 
tree, what might not be expected in the dry? 
The writer makes no comment — draws no moral. 
"Adieu, my dear, delightful child. I cannot ex- 
press my eagerness to see you," are her next words. 
She rattles along, three short sentences more, and 
finishes her letter. 

We should still not have done with these letters, 
were we to go on a hundred pages, or two hundred, 
farther. Readers have already seen truly what 
Madame de Sevigne is. They have only not seen 
fully all that she is. And that they would not see 



Corneille. 151 

short of reading her letters entire. Horace Wal- 
pole aspired to do in English for his own time some- 
thing like what Madame de Sevigne had done in 
French for hers. In a measure he succeeded. The 
difference is, that he was imitative and affected, 
where she was original and genuine. 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu must, of course, 
also be named, as, by her sex, her social position, 
her talent, and the devotion of her talent, an Eng- 
lish analogue to Madame de Sevigne. But these 
comparisons, and all comparison, leave the French 
woman without a true parallel, alone in her rank, 
the most famous letter-writer in the world. 



X. 

CORNEILLE. 
1606-1684. 



The two great names in French tragedy are Cor- 
neille and Racine. French tragedy is a very 
different affair from either modern tragedy in Eng- 
lish or ancient tragedy in Greek. It comes nearer 
being Roman epic, such as Lucan wrote Roman 
epic, dramatized. 

Drama is everywhere and always, and this from 
the nature of things, a highly conventional literary 



152 Classic French Course in English. 

form. But the convention under which French 
tragedy should be judged differs, on the one hand, 
from that which existed for Greek tragedy, and, on 
the other hand, from that existing for the English. 
The atmosphere of real life present in English 
tragedy is absent in French. The quasi-supernatural 
religious awe that reigned over Greek tragedy, French 
tragedy does not affect. You miss also in French 
tragedy the severe simplicity, the self-restraint, the 
statuesque repose, belonging to the Greek model. 
Loftiness, grandeur, a loftiness somewhat strained, 
a grandeur tending to be tumid, an heroic tone sus- 
tained at sacrifice of ease and nature — such is the 
element in which French tragedy lives and flourishes. 
You must grant your French tragedists this their 
conventional privilege, or you will not enjoy them. 
You must grant them this, or you cannot understand 
them. Resolve that you will like grandiloquence, 
requiring only that the grandiloquence be good, and 
on this condition we can promise that you will be 
pleased with Corneille and Racine. In fact, our 
readers, we are sure, will find the grandiloquence of 
these two tragedy-writers so very good that a little 
will suffice them. 

Voltaire in his time impressed himself strongly 
enough on his countrymen to get accepted by his 
own generation as an equal third in tragedy with 
Corneille and Racine. There was then a French 
triumvirate of tragedists to be paralleled with the tri- 
umvirate of the Greeks. Corneille was JEschylus ; 



Corneille. 153 

Racine was Sophocles ; and, of course, Euripides 
had his counterpart in Voltaire. Voltaire has since 
descended from the tragic throne, and that neat 
symmetry of trine comparison is spoiled. There is, 
however, some trace of justice in making Corneille 
as related to Eacine resemble JEschylus as related 
to Sophocles. Corneille was first, more rugged, 
loftier ; Racine was second, more polished, more 
severe in taste. Racine had, too, in contrast with 
Corneille, more of the Euripidean sweetness. In 
fact, La Bruyere's celebrated comparison of the two 
Frenchmen — made, of course, before Voltaire — 
yoked them, Corneille with Sophocles, Racine with 
Euripides. 

It was perhaps not without its influence on the 
style of Corneille, that a youthful labor of his in 
authorship was to translate, wholly or partially, the 
"Pharsalia" of Lucan. Corneille always retained 
his fondness for Lucan. This taste on his part, and 
the rhymed Alexandrines in which he wrote tragedy, 
may together help account for the hyper-heroic style 
which is Corneille 's great fault. A lady criticised 
his tragedy, u The Death of Pompey," by saying: 
44 Very fine, but too many heroes in it." Corneille 's 
tragedies generally have, if not too many heroes, at 
least too much hero, in them. Concerning the his- 
torian Gibbon's habitual pomp of expression, it was 
once wittily said that nobody could possibly tell the 
truth in such a style as that. It would be equally 
near the mark if we should say of Corneille' s chosen 



154 Classic French Course in English. 

mould of verse, that nobody could possibly be simple 
and natural in that. Moli&re's comedy, however, 
would almost confute us. 

Pierre Corneille was born in Rouen. He studied 
law, and he was admitted to practice as an advocate, 
like Moli&re ; but, like Moli&re, he heard and he 
heeded an inward voice summoning him away from 
the bar to the stage. Corneille did not, however, 
like Moli&re, tread the boards as an actor. He had 
a lively sense of personal dignity. He was eminently 
the " lofty, grave tragedian," in his own esteem. 
"But I am Pierre Corneille notwithstanding," he 
self-respectingly said once, when friends were regret- 
ting to him some deficiency of grace in his personal 
carriage. One can imagine him taking off his hat 
to himself with unaffected deference. 

But this serious genius began dramatic composi- 
tion with writing comedy. He made several experi- 
ments in this kind with no commanding success ; 
but at thirty he wrote the tragedy of " The Cid," and 
instantly became famous. His subsequent plays 
were chiefly on classical subjects. The subject of 
i s The Cid ' ' was drawn from Spanish literature. This 
was emphatically what has been called an " epoch- 
making " production. Richelieu's "Academy," at 
the instigation, indeed almost under the dictation, 
of Richelieu, who was jealous of Corneille, tried to 
write it down. They succeeded about as Balaam suc- 
ceeded in prophesying against Israel. "The Cid" 
triumphed over them, and over the great minister. 



Corneille. 155 

It established not only Corneille's fame, but his 
authority. The man of genius taken alone, proved 
stronger than the men of taste taken together. 

For all this, however, our readers would hardly 
relish " The Cid." Let us go at once to that tra- 
gedy of Corneille's which, by the general consent of 
French critics, is the best work of its author, the 
" Polyeuctes." The following is the rhetorical cli- 
max of praise in which Gaillard, one of the most 
enlightened of Corneille's eulogists, arranges the 
different masterpieces of his author: " ' The Cid ' 
raised Corneille above his rivals ; the fi Horace ' and 
the ; Cinna ' above his models ; the ' Polyeuctes ' 
above himself." This tragedy will, we doubt not, 
prove to our readers the most interesting of all the 
tragedies of Corneille. 

' ' The great Corneille " — to apply the traditionary 
designation which, besides attributing to our trage- 
dian his conceded general eminence in character 
and genius, serves also to distinguish him by merit 
from his younger brother, who wrote very good 
tragedy — was an illustrious figure at the Hotel de 
Rambouillet, that focus of the best literary criticism 
in France. Corneille reading a play of his to the 
coterie of wits assembled there under the presidency 
of ladies whose eyes, as in a kind of tournament of 
letters, rained influence on authors, and judged the 
prize of genius, is the subject of a striking picture 
by a French painter. Corneille read " Polyeuctes" 
at the Hotel de Rambouillet, and that awful court 



156 Classic French Course in English. 

decided against the play. Corneille, like Michel 
Angelo, had to a good degree the courage of his own 
productions ; but, in the face of adverse decision 
so august on his work, he needed encouragement, 
which happily he did not fail to receive, before he 
would allow his " Polyeuctes " to be represented. 
The theatre crowned it with the laurels of victory. It 
thus fell to Corneille to triumph successively, single- 
handed, over two great adversary courts of critical 
appreciation, — the Academy of Richelieu and the 
not less formidable Hotel de Rambouillet. 

The objection raised by the Hotel de Rambouillet 
against the " Polyeuctes " was that it made the stage 
encroach on the prerogative of the pulpit, and 
preach instead of simply amusing. And, indeed, 
never, perhaps, since the Greek tragedy, was the 
theatre made so much to serve the solemn purposes 
of religion. (We except the miracle and passion 
plays and the mysteries of the middle ages, as not 
belonging within the just bounds of a comparison 
like that now made.) CorneihVs final influence 
was to elevate and purify the French theatre. In 
his early works, however, he made surprising con- 
cessions to the lewd taste in the drama that he found 
prevailing when he began to write. With whatever 
amount of genuine religious scruple affecting his 
conscience, — on that point we need not judge the 
poet, — Corneille used, before putting them on the 
stage, to take his pla}-s to the "Church," — that 
is, to the priestly hierarchy who constituted the 



Corneille. 157 

"Church," — that they might be authoritatively 
judged as to their possible influence on the cause of 
Christian truth. 

In the ' i Polyeuctes, ' ' the motive is religion. Poly- 
euctes is an historic or traditional saint of the Roman- 
Catholic church. His conversion from paganism is 
the theme of the play. Polyeuctes has a friend 
Nearchus who is already a Christian convert, and 
who labors earnestly to make Polyeuctes a proselyte 
to the faith. Polyeuctes has previously married 
a noble Roman ladj', daughter of Felix, governor 
of Armenia, in which province the action of the 
story occurs. (The persecuting Emperor Decius is 
on the throne of the Roman world.) Paulina is 
the daughter's name. Paulina married Polyeuctes 
against her own choice, for she loved Roman Severus 
better. Her father had put his will upon her, and 
Paulina had filially obeyed in marrying Polyeuctes. 
Such are the relations of the different persons of 
the drama. It will be seen that there is ample room 
for the play of elevated and tragic passions. Pau- 
lina, in fact, is the lofty, the impossible, ideal of 
wifely and daughterly truth and devotion. Pagan 
though she is, she is pathetically constant, both to 
the husband that was forced upon her, and to the 
father that did the forcing ; while still she loves, 
and cannot but love, the man whom, in spite of her 
love for him, she, with an act like prolonged sui- 
cide, stoically separates from her torn and bleeding 
heart. 



158 Classic French Course in English. 

But Severus on his part emulates the nobleness 
of the woman whom he vainly loves. Learning the 
true state of the case, he rises to the height of his 
opportunity for magnanimous behavior, and bids 
the married pair be happy in a long life together. 

A change in the situation occurs, a change due to 
the changed mood of the father, Felix. Felix learns 
that Severus is high in imperial favor, and he wishes 
now that Severus, instead of Polyeuctes, were his 
son-in-law. A decree of the emperor makes it pos- 
sible that this preferable alternative may yet be 
realized. For the emperor has decreed that Chris- 
tians must be persecuted to the death, and Polyeuctes 
has been baptized a Christian — though of this Felix 
will not hear till later. 

A solemn sacrifice to the gods is to be celebrated 
in honor of imperial victories lately won. Felix 
sends to summon Polyeuctes, his son-in-law. To 
Felix's horror, Polyeuctes, with his friend Nearchus, 
coming to the temple, proceeds in a frenzy of 
enthusiasm to break and dishonor the images of the 
gods, proclaiming himself a Christian. In obedience 
to the imperial decree, Nearchus is hurried to execu- 
tion, in the sight of his friend, while Polyeuctes is 
thrown into prison to repent and recant. 

' Now is my chance,' muses Felix. ' I dare not 
disobey the emperor, to spare Polyeuctes. Besides, 
with Polyeuctes once out of the way, Severus and 
Paulina may be husband and wife.' 

Polyeuctes in prison hears that his Paulina is 



Corneille. 159 

coming to see him. With a kind of altruistic noble- 
ness which seems contagious in this play, Polyeuctes 
resolves that Severus shall come too, and he will 
resign his wife, soon to be a widow, to the care of 
his own rival, her Roman lover. First, Polyeuctes 
and Paulina are alone together — Polyeuctes having, 
before she arrived, fortified his soul for the conflict 
with her tears, by singing in his solitude a song of 
high resolve and of anticipative triumph over his 
temptation. 

The scene between Paulina, exerting all her power 
to detach Polyeuctes from what she believes to be 
his folly, and Polyeuctes, on the other hand, rapt 
to the pitch of martyrdom, exerting all his power 
to resist his wife, and even to convert her — this 
scene, we say, is full of noble height and pathos, 
as pathos and height were possible in the verse 
which Corneille had to write. Neither struggler in 
this tragic strife moves the other. Paulina is with- 
drawing when Severus enters. She addresses her 
lover severely, but Polyeuctes intervenes to defend 
him. In a short scene, Polyeuctes, by a sort of last 
will and testament, bequeaths his wife to his rival, 
and retires with his guard. Now, Severus and Pau- 
lina are alone together. If there was a trace of the 
false heroic in Polyeuctes's resignation of his wife 
to Severus, the effect of that is finely counteracted 
by the scene which immediately follows between 
Paulina and Severus. Severus begins doubtfully, 
staggering, as it were, to firm posture, while he 



160 Classic French Course in English. 

speaks to Paulina. He expresses amazement at the 
conduct of Polyeuctes. Christians certainly deport 
themselves strangely, he says. He at length finds 
himself using the following lover-like language : — 

As for me, had my destiny become a little earlier propi- 
tious and honored my devotion by marriage with you, I 
should have adored only the splendor of your eyes; of them 
I should have made my kings ; of them I should have made 
my gods ; sooner would I have been reduced to dust, sooner 
would I have been reduced to ashes, than — 

But here Paulina interrupts, and Severus is not 
permitted to finish his protestation. Her reply is 
esteemed, and justly esteemed, one of the noblest 
things in French tragedy — a French critic would 
be likely to say, the very noblest in tragedy. She 
says : — 

Let us break off there; I fear listening too long; I fear 
lest this warmth, which feels your first fires, force on some 
sequel unworthy of us both. [Yoltaire, who edited Cor- 
neille with a feeling of freedom toward a national idol 
comparable to the sturdy independence that animated John- 
son in annotating Shakspeare, says of " This warmth which 
feels your first fires and which forces on a sequel " : " That is 
badly written, agreed; but the sentiment gets the better 
of the expression, and what follows is of a beauty of 
which there had been no example. The Greeks were frigid 
declaimers in comparison with this passage of Corneille."] 
Severus, learn to know Paulina all in all. 

My Polyeuctes touches on his last hour; he has but a 
moment to live; you are the cause of this, though innocently 
so. I know not if your heart, yielding to your desires, may 
have dared build any hope on his destruction; but know 



Corneille. 161 

that there is no death so cruel that to it with firm brow I 
would not bend my steps, that there are in hell no horrors 
that I would not endure, rather than soil a glory so pure, 
rather than espouse, after his sad fate, a man that was in 
any wise the cause of his death; and if you suppose me of a 
heart so little sound, the love which I had for you would all 
turn to hate. You are generous; be so even to the end. 
My father is in a state to yield every thing to you; he fears 
you; and I further hazard this saying, that, if he destroys my 
husband, it is to you that he sacrifices him. Save this un- 
happy man, use your influence in his favor, exert yourself to 
become his support. I know that this is much that I ask; 
but the greater the effort, the greater the glory from it. To 
preserve a rival of whom you are jealous, that is a trait of 
virtue which appertains only to you. And if your renown 
is not motive sufficient, it is much that a woman once so 
well beloved, and the love of whom perhaps is still capable 
of touching you, will owe to your great heart the dearest 
possession that she owns ; remember, in short, that you are 
Severus. Adieu. Decide with yourself alone what you 
ought to do; if you are not such as I dare hope that you are, 
then, in order that I may continue to esteem you, I wish 
not to know it. 

Voltaire, as editor and commentator of Corneille, 
is freezingly cold. It is difficult not to feel that at 
heart he was unfriendly to the great tragedist's 
fame. His notes often are remorselessly gram- 
matical. " This is not French ; " " This is not the 
right word ; " " According to the construction, this 
should mean so and so — according to the sense, it 
must mean so and so ; " " This is hardly intelligi- 
ble ; " " It is a pity that such or such a fault should 
mar these fine verses ; " " An expression for comedy 



162 Classic French Course in English. 

rather than tragedy,' * — are the kind of remarks with 
which Voltaire chills the enthusiasm of the reader. 
It is useless, however, to deny that the criticisms 
thus made are many of them just. Corneille does 
not belong to the class of the " faultily faultless " 
writers. 

Severus proves equal to Paulina's noble hopes of 
him. With a great effort of self-sacrifice, he re- 
solves to intercede for Polyeuctes. This is shown 
in an interview between Severus and his faithful 
attendant Fabian. Fabian warns him that he ap- 
peals for Polyeuctes at his own peril. Severus 
loftily replies (and here follows one of the most 
lauded passages in the play) : — 

That advice might be good for some common soul. 
Though he [the Emperor Decius] holds in his hands my 
life and my fortune, I am yet Severus; and all that mighty 
power is powerless over my glory, and powerless over my 
duty. Here honor compels me, and I will satisfy it ; whether 
fate afterward show itself propitious or adverse, perishing 
glorious I shall perish content. 

I will tell thee further, but under confidence, the sect of 
Christians is not what it is thought to be. They are hated, 
why I know not; and I see Decius unjust only in this 
regard. From curiosity I have sought to become acquainted 
with them. They are regarded as sorcerers taught from 
hell; and, in this supposition, the punishment of death is 
visited on secret mysteries which we do not understand. 
But Eleusinian Ceres and the Good Goddess have their 
secrets, like those at Rome and in Greece ; still we freely 
tolerate everywhere, their god alone excepted, every kind of 
god; all the monsters of Egypt have their temples in Rome; 



Corneille. 163 

our fathers, at their will, made a god of a man; and, their 
blood in our veins preserving their errors, we fill heaven 
with all our emperors; but, to speak without disguise of 
deifications so numerous, the effect is very doubtful of such 
metamorphoses. 

Christians have but one God, absolute master of all, 
whose mere will does whatever he resolves ; but, if I may 
venture to say what seems to me true, our gods very often 
agree ill together; and, though their wrath crush me before 
your eyes, we have a good many of them for them to be 
true gods. Finally, among the Christians, morals are pure, 
vices are hated, virtues flourish; they offer prayers on be- 
half of us who persecute them; and, during all the time 
since we have tormented them, have they ever been seen 
mutinous ? Have they ever been seen rebellious ? Have our 
princes ever had more faithful soldiers ? Fierce in war, 
they submit themselves to our executioners; and, lions in 
combat, they die like lambs. I pity them too much not to 
defend them. Come, let us find Felix; let us commune 
with his son-in-law ; and let us thus, with one single action, 
gratify at once Paulina, and my glory, and my com- 
passion. 

Such is the high heroic style in which pagan 
Severus resolves and speaks. And thus the fourth 
act ends. 

Felix makes a sad contrast with the high-hearted- 
ness which the other characters, most of them, 
display. He is base enough to suspect that Severus 
•is base enough to be false and treacherous in his 
act of intercession for Polyeuctes. He imagines he 
detects a plot against himself to undermine him 
with the emperor. Voltaire criticises Corneille for 
giving this sordid character to Felix. He thinks 



164 Classic French Course in English. 

the tragedist might better have let Felix be actuated 
by zeal for the pagan gods. The mean selfishness 
that animates the governor, Voltaire regards as 
below the right tragic pitch. It is the poet him- 
self, no doubt, with that high Roman fashion of his, 
who, unconsciously to the critic, taught him to make 
the criticism. 

Felix summons Polyeuctes to an interview, and 
adjures him to be a prudent man. Felix at length 
says, " Adore the gods, or die." " I am a Chris- 
tian," simply replies the martyr. " Impious ! Adore 
them, I bid you, or renounce life." (Here again 
Voltaire offers One of his refrigerant criticisms : 
" Renounce life does not advance upon the meaning 
of die; when one repeats the thought, the expres- 
sion should be strengthened.") Paulina meantime 
has entered to expostulate with Polyeuctes and with 
her father. Polyeuctes bids her, ' Live with Sev- 
erus.' He says he has revolved the subject, and he 
is convinced that another love is the sole remedy 
for her woe. He proceeds in the calmest manner 
to point out the advantages of the course recom- 
mended. Voltaire remarks, — justly, we are bound 
to say, — that these maxims are here somewhat 
revolting ; the martyr should have had other things 
to say. Oh Felix's final word, " Soldiers, execute 
the order that I have given," Paulina exclaims, 
" Whither are you taking him?" "To death," 
says Felix. " To glory," says Polyeuctes. " Ad- 
mirable dialogue, and always applauded," is Vol- 
taire's note on this. 



Corneille. 165 

The tragedy does not end with the martyrdom of 
Polyeuctes. Paulina becomes a Christian, but re- 
mains pagan enough to call her father " barbarous " 
in acrimoniously bidding him finish his work by put- 
ting his daughter also to death. Severus reproaches 
Felix for his cruelty, and threatens him with his own 
enmity. Felix undergoes instantaneous conversion, 
— a miracle of grace which, under the circumstances 
provided by Corneille, we may excuse Voltaire for 
laughing at. Paulina is delighted ; and Severus 
asks, u Who would not be touched by a spectacle 
so tender? " 

The tragedy thus comes near ending happily 
enough to be called a comedy. 

Such as the foregoing exhibits him, is Corneille, 
the father of French tragedy, where at his best ; 
where at his worst, he is something so different that 
you would hardly admit him to be the same man. 
For never was genius more unequal in different 
manifestations of itself, than Corneille in his dif- 
ferent works. Moliere is reported to have said that 
Corneille had a familiar, or a fairy, that came to him 
at times, and enabled him to write sublimely ; but 
that, when the poet was left to himself, he could write 
as poorly as another man. 

Corneille produced some thirty-three dramatic 
pieces in all, but of these not more than six or 
seven retain their place on the French stage. 

Besides his plays, there is a translation in verse 
by him of the "Imitation of Christ ;" there are 



166 Classic French Course in English. 

metrical versions of a considerable number of the 
Psalms ; there are odes, madrigals, sonnets, stan- 
zas, addresses to the king. Then there are dis- 
courses in prose on dramatic poetry, on tragedy, 
and on the three unities. Add to these, elaborate 
appreciations by himself of a considerable number 
of his own plays, prefaces, epistles, arguments to 
his pieces, and you have, what with the notes, the 
introductions, the eulogies, and other such things 
that the faithful French editor knows so well how 
to accumulate, matter enough of Corneille to swell 
out eleven, or, in one edition, — that issued under 
Napoleon as First Consul, — even twelve, handsome 
volumes of his works. 

Corneille and Bossuet together constitute a kind 
of rank by themselves among the Dii Majores of 
the French literary Olympus. 



XI. 

RACINE. 
1639-1699. 

Jean Racine was Pierre Corneille reduced to rule. 
The younger was to the elder somewhat as Sophocles 
or Euripides w r as to ^Eschylus, as Virgil was to 
Lucretius, as Pope was to Dryden. Nature was 



Racine. 167 

more in Corneille, art was more in Racine. Cor- 
neille was a pathfinder in literature. He led the 
way, even for Moli&re, still more for Racine. But 
Racine was as much before Corneille in perfection 
of art, as Corneille was before Racine in audacity 
of genius. Racine, accordingly, is much more even 
and uniform than Corneille. Smoothness, polish, 
ease, grace, sweetness, — these, and monotony in 
these, are the mark of Racine. But if there is, 
in the latter poet, less to admire, there is also less 
to forgive. His taste and his judgment were surer 
than the taste and the judgment of Corneille. He 
enjoyed, moreover, an inestimable advantage in the 
life-long friendship of the great critic of his time, 
Boileau. Boileau was a literary conscience to Ra- 
cine. He kept Racine constantly spurred to his 
best endeavors in art. Racine was congratulating 
himself to his friend on the ease with which he pro- 
duced his verse. " Let me teach you to produce 
easy verse with difficulty,'' was the critic's admi- 
rable reply. Racine was a docile pupil. He became 
as painstaking an artist in verse as Boileau would 
have him. 

It will always be a matter of individual taste, and 
of changing fashion in criticism, to decide which of 
the two is, on the whole, to be preferred to the 
other. Racine eclipsed Corneille in vogue during 
the lifetime of the latter. Corneille's old age was, 
perhaps, seriously saddened by the consciousness, 
which he could not but have, of being retired from 



168 Classic French Course in English. 

the place of ascendenc} 7 once accorded to him over 
all. His case repeated the fortune of iEschylus in 
relation to Sophocles. The eighteenth century, 
taught by Voltaire, established the precedence of 
Racine. But the nineteenth century has restored 
the crown to the brow of Corneille. To such mu- 
tations is subject the fame of an author. 

Jean Racine was early left an orphan. His grand- 
parents put him, after preparatory training at an- 
other establishment, to school at Port Royal, where 
during three 3 r ears he had the best opportunities of 
education that the kingdom afforded. His friends 
wanted to make a clergyman of him ; but the pref- 
erences of the boy prevailed, and he addicted him- 
self to literature. The Greek tragedists became 
familiar to him in his youth, and their example in 
literary art exercised a sovereign influence over 
Racine's development as author. It pained the 
good Port- Royalists to see their late gifted pupil, 
now out of their hands, inclined to write plays. 
Nicole printed a remonstrance against the theatre, 
in which Racine discovered something that he took 
to slant anonymously at himself. He wrote a spirited 
reply, of which no notice was taken by the Port- 
Royalists. Somebody, however, on their behalf, 
rejoined to Racine, whereupon the young author 
wrote a second letter to the Port-Royalists, which 
he showed to his friend Boileau. " This may do 
credit to your head, but it will do none to your 
heart," was that faithful mentor's comment, in 



Racine. 169 

returning the document. Eacine suppressed his 
second letter, and did his best to recall the first. 
But he went on in his course of writing for the 
stage. 

The " Thebaid " was Eacine's first tragedy, — at 
least his first that attained to the honor of being 
represented. Moliere brought it out in his theatre, 
the Palais Eoyal. His second tragedy, the "Alex- 
ander the Great," was also put into the hands of 
Moliere. 

This latter play the author took to Corneille to 
get his judgment on it. Corneille was thirty- three 
years the senior of Eacine, and he was at this time 
the undisputed master of French tragedy. " You 
have undoubted talent for poetry — for tragedy, not ; 
try your hand in some other poetical line," was Cor- 
neille' s sentence on the unrecognized young rival, 
who was so soon to supplant him in popular favor. 

The "Andromache" followed the "Alexander," 
and then Eacine did try his hand in another poetical 
line; for he wrote a comedy, his only one, "The 
Suitors," as is loosely translated " Les Plaideurs," 
a title which has a legal, and not an amorous, mean- 
ing. This play, after it had at first failed, Louis 
XIV. laughed into court favor. It became thence- 
forward a great success. It still keeps its place on 
the stage. It is, however, a farce, rather than a 
comedy. 

We pass over now one or two of the subsequent 
productions of Eacine, to mention next a play of 



170 Classic French Course in Unglish. 

his which had a singular historj\ It was a fancy of 
the brilliant Princess Henriette (that same daughter 
of English Charles L, Bossuet's funeral oration on 
whom, presently to be spoken of, is so celebrated) 
to engage the two great tragedists, Corneille and 
Racine, both at once, in labor, without their mutual 
knowledge, upon the same subject, — a subject 
which she herself, drawing it from the history of 
Tacitus, conceived to be eminently fit for tragical 
treatment. Corneille produced his " Berenice, " 
and Racine his "Titus and Berenice." The prin- 
cess died before the two plays which she had inspired 
were produced ; but, when they were produced, Ra- 
cine's work won the palm. The rivalry created a 
bitterness between the two authors, of which, natu- 
rall}', the defeated one tasted the more deeply. An 
ill-considered pleasantry, too, of Racine's, in making, 
out of one of Corneille 's tragic lines in his u Cid," 
a comic line in " The Suitors," hurt the old man's 
pride. That pride suffered a worse hurt still. The 
chief Parisian theatre, completely occupied with the 
works of his victorious rival, rejected tragedies 
offered by Corneille. 

Still, Racine did not have tilings all his own way. 
Some good critics considered the rage for this 
younger dramatist a mere passing whim of fashion. 
These — Madame de Sevigne was of them — stood 
by their " old admiration," and were true to Cor- 
neille. 

A memorable mortification and chagrin for our 



Racine. 171 

poet was now prepared by his enemies — he seems 
never to have lacked enemies — with lavish and 
elaborate malice. Racine had produced a play from 
Euripides, the " Phaedra," on which he had un- 
stintingly bestowed his best genius and his best art. 
It was contrived that another poet, one Pradon, 
should, at the self-same moment, have a play rep- 
resented on the self-same subject. At a cost of 
many thousands of dollars, the best seats at Racine's 
theatre were all bought by his enemies, and left 
solidly vacant. The best seats at Pradon 's theatre 
were all bought by the same interested parties, and 
duly occupied with industrious and zealous applaud- 
ers. This occurred at six successive representa- 
tions. The result was the immediate apparent 
triumph of Pradon over the humiliated Racine. 
Boileau in vain bade his friend be of good cheer, 
and await the assured reversal of the verdict. 
Racine was deeply wounded. 

This discomposing experience of the poet's, joined 
with conscientious misgivings on his part as to the 
propriety of his course in writing for the stage, led 
him now, at the early age of thirty-eight, to renounce 
tragedy altogether. His son Louis, from whose 
life of Racine we have chiefly drawn our material 
for the present sketch, conceives this change in his 
father as a profound and genuine religious conver- 
sion. Writers whose spirit inclines them not to 
relish a condemnation such as seems thus to be 
reflected on the theatre, take a less charitable 



172 Classic French Course in English. 

view of the change. They account for it as a 
reaction of mortified pride. Some of them go so 
far as groundlessly to impute sheer hypocrisy to 
Racine. 

A long interval of silence, on Racine's part, had 
elapsed, when Madame de Maintenon, the wife of 
Louis XIV., asked the unemployed poet to prepare 
a sacred play for the use of the high-born girls 
educated under her care at St. Cyr. Racine con- 
sented, and produced his " Esther." This achieved 
a prodigious success ; for the court took it up, and 
an exercise written for a girls' school became the 
admiration of a kingdom. A second similar play 
followed, the u Athaliah," — the last, and, by gen- 
eral agreement, the most perfect, work of its author. 
We thus reach that tragedy of Racine's which both 
its fame and its character dictate to us as the one 
by eminence to be used here in exhibition of the 
quality of this Virgil among tragedists. 

Our readers may, if they please, refresh their 
recollection of the history on which the drama is 
founded by perusing Second Kings, chapter eleven, 
and Second Chronicles, chapters twenty-two and 
twenty-three. Athaliah, whose name gives its title 
to the tragedy, was daughter to the wicked king, 
Ahab. She reigns as queen at Jerusalem over the 
kingdom of Judah. To secure her usurped position, 
she had sought to kill all the descendants of King 
David, even her own grandchildren. She had suc- 
ceeded, — but not quite. Young Joash escaped, to 



Racine. 173 

be secretly reared in the temple by the high priest. 
The final disclosure of this hidden prince, and his 
coronation as king in place of usurping Athaliah, 
destined to be fearfully overthrown, and put to death 
in his name, afford the action of the play. Action, 
however, there is almost none in classic French 
tragedy. The tragic drama is, with the French, as 
it was with the Greeks, after whom it was framed, 
merely a succession of scenes in w r hich speeches are 
made by the actors. Lofty declamation is always 
the character of the play. In the " Athaliah," as 
in the "Esther," Racine introduced the feature of 
the chorus, a restoration which had all the effect 
of an innovation. The chorus in " Athaliah con- 
sisted of Hebrew virgins, who, at intervals marking 
the transitions between the acts, chanted the spirit 
of the piece in its successive stages of progress 
toward the final catastrophe. The " Athaliah" is 
almost proof against technical criticism. It is 
acknowledged to be, after its kind, a nearly ideal 
product of art. 

There is a curious story about the fortune of this 
piece with the public, that will interest our readers. 
The first success of "Athaliah " was not great. In 
fact, it was almost a flat failure. But a company of 
wits, playing at forfeits somewhere in the country, 
severely sentenced one of their number to go by 
himself, and read the first act of " Athaliah." The 
victim went, and did not return. Sought at length, 
he was found just commencing a second perusal of 



174 Classic French Course in English. 

the play entire. He reported of it so enthusiasti- 
cally, that he was asked to read it before the com- 
pany, which he did, to their delight. This started 
a reaction in favor of the condemned play, which 
soon came to be counted the masterpiece of its 
author. 

First, in specimen of the choral feature of the 
drama, we content ourselves with giving a single cho- 
rus from the " Athaiiah." This we turn into rhyme, 
clinging pretty closely all the way to the form of the 
original. Attentive readers may, in one place of our 
rendering, observe an instance of identical rhyme. 
This, in a piece of verse originally written in English, 
would, of course, be a fault. In a translation from 
French, it may pass for a merit ; since, to judge from 
the practice of the national poets, the French ear 
seems to be even better pleased with such strict identi- 
ties of sound, at the close of corresponding lines, than 
it is with those definite mere resemblances to which, 
in English versification, rhymes are rigidly lim- 
ited. Suspense between hope and dread, dread 
preponderating, is the state of feeling represented 
in the present chorus. Salomith is the leading 

Salomith. 

The Lord hath deigned to speak, 
But what he to his prophet now hath shown — 
Who unto us will make it clearly known ? 

Arms he himself to save us, poor and weak ? 

Arms he himself to have us overthrown ? 



Racine. 175 

The whole Chorus. 

promises ! O threats ! O mystery profound ! 
What woe, what weal, are each in turn foretold ? 

How can so much of wrath be found 
So much of love to enfold ? 

A Voice. 
Zion shall be no more ; a cruel flame 
Will all her ornaments devour. 

A Second Voice. 
God shelters Zion ; she has shield and tower 
In His eternal name. 

First Voice. 

1 see her splendor all from vision disappear. 

Second Voice. 
I see on every side her glory shine more clear. 

First Voice. 
Into a deep abyss is Zion sunk from sight. 

Second Voice. 
Zion lifts up her brow amid celestial light. 

First Voice. 
What dire despair ! 

Second Voice. 

What praise from every tongue ! 

First Voice. 
What cries of grief ! 

Second Voice. 

What songs of triumph sung! 



176 Classic French Course in English. 

A Third Voice. 
Cease we to vex ourselves ; our God, one day, 
Will this great mystery make clear. 

All Three Voices. 
Let us his wrath revere, 
While on his love, no less, our hopes we stay. 

The catastrophe is reached in the coronation of 
little Joash as king, and in the destruction of usurp- 
ing and wicked Athaliah. Little Joash, by the wa}', 
with his rather precocious wisdom of reply, derived 
to himself, for the moment, a certain factitious in- 
terest, from the resemblance, meant by the poet to 
be divined by spectators, between him and the little 
Duke of Burgundy, Louis XIV. 's grandson, then 
of about the same age with the Hebrew boy, and 
of high reputation for mental vivacity. 

The scene in which the high priest, Jehoiada, for 
the first time discloses to his foster-son, Joash, the 
latter' s royal descent from David, and his true heir- 
ship to the throne of Juclah, will serve sufficiently 
to exhibit what maturity of modest and pious wis- 
dom the dramatist attributes to this Hebrew boy of 
nine or ten years. Nine or ten years of age Eacine 
makes Joash, instead of seven, as Scripture, inter- 
preted without violence, would make him. The lad 
has had his sage curiosity 'excited by seeing prepa- 
rations in progress for some important ceremonial. 
That ceremonial is his own coronation, but he does 
not guess the secret. Nay, he has just touchingly 



Racine. 177 

asked his foster-mother, observed by him to be in 
tears : — 

Wliat pity touches you ? Is it that in a holocaust to be 
this day offered, I, like Jephtha's daughter in other times, 
must pacify by my death the anger of the Lord ? Alas, a 
son has nothing that does not belong to his father ! 

The discreet foster-mother refers the lad to her 
husband, Jehoiada, now approaching. Joash rushes 
into the arms of the high priest, exclaiming, "My 
father!" "Well, my son?" the high-priest re- 
plies. " What preparations, then, are these? " asks 
Joash. The high priest bids him prepare himself 
to listen and learn, the time being now come for 
him to pay his debt to God : — 

Joash. I feel myself ready, if he wishes it, to give to 
him my life. 

Jehoiada. You have often heard read the history of 
our kings. Do you remember, my son, what strict laws a 
king worthy of the crown ought to impose upon himself ? 

Joash. A wise and good king, so hath God himself de- 
clared, puts not his reliance upon riches and gold ; he fears 
the Lord his God, has ever before him his precepts, his 
laws, his judgments severe, and does not with unjust bur- 
dens overwhelm his brethren. 

Fenelon had already been two years preceptor to 
the Duke of Burguncly when this tragedy was writ- 
ten. It is impossible not to feel that Racine must 
have had that prince in mind when he put into the 
mouth of young Joash sentiments so likely to have 



178 Classic French Course in English. 

been instilled into the heart of his royal pupil, the 
great king's grandson, by such a preceptor as Fene- 
lon. How could the selfish old monarch of France 
contrive to avoid recognizing his own portrait, sug- 
gested by contrast in that description of the good 
king from the lips of little Joash ? Racine was here 
treading on treacherous ground. He will presently 
find his footing quite give way under him, to let 
him down into the " horrible pit" of disgrace with 
his king. This not, however, in the present play. 

The tragedist has generously bestowed upon 
wicked Queen Athaliah a certain loftiness of spirit 
which, in its display in the final catastrophe, almost re- 
deems her to admiration, if not to sympathy. There 
is nothing in the play more nearly sublime in decla- 
mation than the final speech in which Athaliah greets 
her own doom, and blasphemously forecasts, for 
young King Joash, a future of apostasy from God. 
With this admirable piece of rhetoric, resembling a 
burst of blasphemy from Satan in " Paradise Lost," 
so far as French poetry may be allowed to resemble 
English, we conclude our representation of Racine. 
Athaliah has now just heard the announcement of 
things that assure her of the overthrow of her 
usurpation. She expresses herself in a speech, the 
first words of which were, no doubt, designed by the 
poet to recall the celebrated traditional exclamation 
of Julian the Apostate, uttered 7 at a moment of 
irretrievable disaster to his impious hopes, — u O 
Galilean, thou hast conquered ! " as follows : — 



Racine* 179 

God of the Jews, 'tis thou that dost prevail! 

Ay, it is Joash ; all without avail 

Seek I to cheat myself with other thought : 

I know the wound my weapon on him wrought ; 

I see his father Ahaziah's face; 

Naught but brings back to me that hated race. 

David doth triumph, Ahab only fall, — 

Unpitying God, thou only hast done all ! 

'Tis thou that flattering me to hope in vain 

For easy vengeance, o'er and o'er again 

Hast with myself myself embroiled anew, 

Now pangs of conscience rousing, not a few, 

Now dazzling me with thy rich treasures rare, 

Which I to burn or pillage did not dare. 

Let him, then, reign, this son, thy care, thy toil, 

And, so to signalize his new-got spoil, 

Let him into my bosom plunge the knife, 

And take with filial hand his mother's life. 

Hearken what wish for him she dying breathes — 

Wish ? nay, what hope, assured hope, bequeaths, — 

That, disobedient, proud, rebellious, he, 

Faithful to Ahab's blood received from me, 

To his grandfather, to his father, like, 

Abhorrent heir of David, down may strike 

Thy worship and thy fane, avenger fell 

Of Athaliah, Ahab, Jezebel! 

With words thus rendered into such English verse 
as we could command for the purpose, Athaliah 
disappears from the stage. Her execution follows 
immediately. This is not exhibited, but is announced 
with brief, solemn comment from Jehoiada. And 
so the tragedy ends. 

The interest of the piece, to the modern reader, 
is by no means equal to its fame. One reproaches 



180 Classic French Course in English. 

one's self, but one yawns in conscientiously perusing 
it. Still, one feels the work of the author to be 
irreproachably, nay, consummately, good. But 
fashions in taste change ; and we cannot hold our- 
selves responsible for admiring, or, at any rate, for 
enjoying, according to the judgment of other races 
and of former generations. It is — so, with grave 
concurrence, we say — It is a great classic, worthy 
of the praise that it receives. We are glad that we 
have read it ; and, let us be candid, equally glad 
that we have not to read it again. 

As has already been intimated, Racine, after 
" Athaliah," wrote tragedy no more. He ceased 
to interest himself in the fortune of his plays. His 
son Louis, in his Life of his father, testifies that he 
never heard his father speak in the family of the 
dramas that he had written. His theatrical triumphs 
seemed to afford him no pleasure. He repented of 
them rather than gloried in them. 

While one need not doubt that this regret of 
Racine's for the devotion of his powers to the pro- 
duction of tragedy, was a sincere regret of his con- 
science, one may properly wish that the regret had 
been more heroic. The fact is, Racine was some- 
what feminine in character as well as in genius. 
He could not beat up with stout heart undismayed 
against an adverse wind. And the wind blew ad- 
verse at length to Racine, from the principal quarter, 
the court of Versailles. From being a chief favorite 
with his sovereign, Racine fell into the position of 



Racine. 181 

an exile from the royal presence. The immediate 
occasion was one honorable rather than otherwise 
to the poet. 

In conversation with Madame de Maintenon, 
Eacine had expressed views on the state of France 
and on the duties of a king to his subjects, which 
so impressed her mind that she desired him to 
reduce his observations to writing, and confide them 
to her, she promising to keep them profoundly secret 
from Louis. But Louis surprised her with the manu- 
script in her hand. Taking it from her, he read in 
it, and demanded to know the author. Madame de 
Maintenon could not finally refuse to tell. " Does 
M. Racine, because he is a great poet, think that 
he knows everything?" the despot angrily asked. 
Louis never spoke to Eacine again. The distressed 
and infatuated poet still made some paltry request 
of the king, to experience the humiliation that he 
invoked. His request was not granted. Eacine 
wilted, like a tender plant, under the sultry frown 
of his monarch. He could not rally. He soon 
after died, literally killed by the mere displeasure 
of one man. Such was the measureless power 
wielded by Louis XIV. ; such was the want of virile 
stuff in Eacine. A spirit partly kindred to the tra- 
gedist, Archbishop Fenelon, will presently be shown 
to have had at about the same time a partly similar 
experience. 



182 Classic French Course in English 



XII. 

BOSSUET: 1627-1704; BOURDALOUE: 1632- 
1704; MASSILLON: 1663-1742. 

We group three names in one title, Bossuet, Bour- 
daloue, Massillon, to represent the pulpit orators of 
France. There are other great names, — as Flechier, 
with Claude and Saurin, the last two, Protestants 
both, — but the names we choose are the greatest. 

Bossuet' s individual distinction is, that he was a 
great man as well as a great orator ; Bourdaloue's, 
that he was priest-and-preacher simply ; Massillon' s, 
that his sermons, regarded quite independently of 
their subject, their matter, their occasion, regarded 
merely as masterpieces of pure and classic style, 
became at once, and permanently became, a part of 
French literature. 

The greatness of Bossuet is an article in the 
French national creed. No Frenchman disputes it ; 
no Frenchman, indeed, but proclaims it. Protestant 
agrees with Catholic, infidel with Christian, at least 
in this. Bossuet, twinned here with Corneille, is to 
the Frenchman, as Milton is to the Englishman, his 
synonym for sublimity. Eloquence, somehow, seems 
a thing too near the common human level to answer 
fully the need that Frenchmen feel in speaking of 
Bossuet. Bossuet is not eloquent, he is sublime. 



Bossuet. 183 

That in French it is in equal part oratory, while in 
English it is poetry almost alone, that supplies in 
literature its satisfaction to the sentiment of the 
sublime, very well represents the difference in genius 
between the two races. The French idea of poetry 
is eloquence ; and it is eloquence carried to its height, 
whether in verse or in prose, that constitutes for the 
Frenchman sublimity. The difference is a difference 
of blood. English blood is Teutonic in base, and 
the imagination of the Teuton is poetic. French 
blood, in base, is Celtic ; and the imagination of the 
Celt is oratoric. 

Jacques Benigne Bossuet was of good bourgeois, 
or middle-class, stock. He passed a well-ordered 
and virtuous youth, as if in prophetic consistency 
with what was to be his subsequent career. He was 
brought forward while a young man in the Hotel 
de Eambouillet, where, on a certain occasion, he 
preached a kind of show sermon, under the auspices 
of his admiring patron. In due time he attracted 
wide public attention, not merely as an eloquent 
orator, but as a profound student and as a powerful 
controversialist. His character and influence be- 
came in their maturity such, that La Bruy&re aptly 
called him a " Father of the Church." " The Cor- 
neille of the pulpit," was Henri Martin's charac- 
terization and praise. A third phrase, "the eagle 
of Meaux," has passed into almost an alternative 
name for Bossuet. He soared like an eagle in his 
eloquence, and he was bishop of Meaux. 



184 Classic French Course in English. 

Bossuet and Louis XIV. were exactly suited to 
each other, in the mutual relation of subject and 
sovereign. Bossuet preached sincerely — as every- 
body knows Louis sincerely practised — the doctrine 
of the divine right of kings to rule absolutely. But 
the proud prelate compromised neither his own dig- 
nity nor the dignity of the Church in the presence 
of the absolute monarch. 

Bossuet threw himself with great zeal, and to pro- 
digious effect, into the controversy against Protes- 
tantism. His " History of the Variations of the 
Protestant Churches," in two good volumes, was 
one of the mightiest pamphlets ever written. As 
tutor to the Dauphin (the king's eldest son), he 
produced, with other works, his celebrated u Dis- 
course on Universal Histor}\" 

In proceeding now to give, from the three great 
preachers named in our title, a few specimen pas- 
sages of the most famous pulpit oratory in the world, 
we need to prepare our readers against a natural 
disappointment. That which they are about to see 
has nothing in it of what will at first strike them as 
brilliant. The pulpit eloquence of the Augustan 
age of France was distinctly " classic," and not at 
all u romantic," in style. Its character is not ornate, 
but severe. There is little rhetorical figure in it, 
little of that ' ' illustration ' ' which our own different 
national taste is accustomed to demand from the 
pulpit. There is plenty of white light, "dry light" 
and white, for the reason ; but there is almost no 



Bossuet. 185 

bright color for the fancy, and, it must be added, 
not a great deal of melting warmth for the heart. 

The funeral orations of Bossuet are generally es- 
teemed the masterpieces of this orator's eloquence. 
He had great occasious, and he was great to match 
them. Still, readers might easily be disappointed in 
perusing a funeral oration of Bossuet's. The dis- 
course will generally be found to deal in common- 
places of description, of reflection, and of sentiment. 
Those commonplaces, however, are often made very 
impressive by the lofty, the magisterial, the imperial, 
manner of the preacher in treating them. We ex- 
hibit a specimen, a single specimen only, and a 
brief one, in the majestic exordium to the funeral 
oration on the Princess Henrietta of England. 

This princess was the last one left of the children 
of King Charles I. of England. Her mother's death 
— her mother was of the French house of Bourbon — 
had occurred but a short time before, and Bossuet 
had on that occasion pronounced the eulogy. The 
daughter, scarcely returned to France from a secret 
mission of state to England, the success cf which 
made her an object of distinguished regard at Ver- 
sailles, suddenly fell ill and died. Bossuet was 
summoned to preach at her funeral. (TTe have not 
been able to find an English translation of Bossuet, 
and we accordingly make the present transfer from 
French ourselves. "We do the same, for the same 
reason, in the case of Massillon. In the case of 
Bourdaloue, we succeeded in obtaining a printed 



186 Classic French Course in English. 

translation which we could modify to suit our pur- 
pose.) Bossuet : — 

It was then reserved for my lot to pay this funereal trib- 
ute to the high and potent princess, Henrietta of England, 
Duchess of Orleans. She whom I had seen so attentive 
while I was discharging a like office for the queen her 
mother, was so soon after to be the subject of a similar dis- 
course, and my sad voice was predestined to this melancholy 
service. O vanity ! O nothingness ! O mortals ! ignorant of 
their destiny! Ten months ago, would she have believed 
it ? And you, my hearers, would you have thought, while 
she was shedding so many tears in this place, that she was 
so soon to assemble you here to deplore her own loss ? O 
princess ! the worthy object of the admiration of two great 
kingdoms, was it not enough that England should deplore 
your absence, without being yet further compelled to deplore 
your death ? France, who with so much joy beheld you 
again, surrounded with a new brilliancy, had she not in 
reserve other pomps and other triumphs for you, returned 
from that famous voyage whence you had brought hither so 
much glory, and hopes so fair ? " Yanity of vanities; all is 
vanity." Nothing is left for me to say but that; that is the 
only sentiment which, in presence of so strange a casualty, 
grief so well-grounded and so poignant, permits me to in- 
dulge. Nor have I explored the Holy Scriptures in order to 
find therein some text which I might apply to this princess ; 
I have taken, without premeditation and without choice, 
the first expression presented to me by the Preacher, with 
whom vanity, although it has been so often named, is yet, 
to my mind, not named often enough to suit the purpose 
that I have in view. I wish, in a single misfortune, to 
lament all the calamities of the human race, and in a single 
death to exhibit the death and the nothingness of all human 
greatness. This text, which suits all the circumstances and 
all the occurrences of our life, becomes, by a special adapted- 



JBossuet. 187 

ness, appropriate to my mournful theme ; since never were 
the vanities of the earth either so clearly disclosed or so 
openly confounded. No, after what we have just seen, 
health is but a name, life is but a dream, glory is but a 
shadow, charms and pleasures are but a dangerous diversion. 
Every thing is vain within us, except the sincere acknowl- 
edgment made before God of our vanity, and the fixed judg- 
ment of the mind, leading us to despise all that we are. 

But did I speak the truth ? Man, whom God made in his 
own image, is he but a shadow ? That which Jesus Christ 
came from heaven to earth to seek, that which he deemed that 
he could, without degrading himself, ransom with his own 
blood, is that a mere nothing ? Let us acknowledge our mis- 
take; surely this sad spectacle of the vanity of things human 
was leading us astray, and public hope, baffled suddenly by 
the death of this princess, was urging us too far. It must 
not be permitted to man to despise himself entirely, lest he, 
supposing, in common with the wicked, that our life is but a 
game in which chance reigns, take his way without rule and 
without self-control, at the pleasure of his own blind wishes. 
It is for this reason that the Preacher, after having com- 
menced his inspired production by the expressions which I 
have cited, after having filled all its pages with contempt for 
things human, is pleased at last to show man something 
more substantial, by saying to him, "Fear God, and keep 
his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For 
God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret 
thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Thus 
every thing is vain in man, if we regard what he gives to the 
world; but, on the contrary, every thing is important, if we 
consider what he owes to God. Once again, every thing is 
vain in man, if we regard the course of his mortal life; but 
every thing is of value, every thing is important, if we con- 
template the goal where it ends, and the accoimt of it which 
he must render. Let us, therefore, meditate to-day, in pres- 
ence of this altar and of this tomb, the first and the last 



188 Classic French Course in English 

utterance of the Preacher; of which the one shows the 
nothingness of man, the other establishes his greatness. 
Let this tomb convince us of our nothingness, provided that 
this altar, where is daily offered for us a Victim of price so 
great, teach us at the same time our dignity. The princess 
whom we weep shall be a faithful witness, both of the one 
and of the other. Let us survey that which a sudden death 
has taken away from her; let us survey that which a holy 
death has bestowed upon her. Thus shall we learn to de- 
spise that which she quitted without regret, in order to 
attach all our regard to that which she embraced with so 
much ardor, — when her soul, purified from all earthly senti- 
ments, full of the heaven on whose border she touched, saw 
the light completely revealed. Such are the truths wdiich I 
have to treat, and which I have deemed worthy to be pro- 
posed to so great a prince, and to the most illustrious assem- 
bly in the world. 

It will be felt how removed is the foregoing from 
any thing like an effort, on the preacher's part, to 
startle his audience with the far-fetched and unex- 
pected. It must, however,, be admitted that Bossuet 
was not always — as, of our Webster, it has well been 
said that he always was — superior to the tempta- 
tion to exaggerate an occasion by pomps of rhetoric. 
Bossuet was a great man, but tie was not quite great 
enough to be wholly free from pride of self -con- 
sciousness in matching himself as orator against 
" the most illustrious assembly in the world." 

The ordinary sermons of Bossuet are less read, 
and they less deserve perhaps to be read, than those 
of Bourdaloue and Massillon. 



Bourdaloue. 189 

Bourdaloue was a voice. He was the voice of 
one crying, not in the wilderness, but amicl the homes 
and haunts of men, and, by eminence, in the court 
of the most powerful and most splendid of earthly 
monarchs. He was a Jesuit, one of the most de- 
voted and most accomplished of an order filled with 
devoted and accomplished men. It belonged to his 
Jesuit character and Jesuit training, that Bourdaloue 
should hold the place that he did as ever-successful 
courtier at Versailles, all the while that, as preacher, 
he was using the w% holy freedom of the pulpit " to 
launch those blank fulminations of his at sin in high 
places, at sin even in the highest, and all the briefer 
while that, as confessor to Madame de Maintenon, 
he was influencing the policy of Louis XIV. 

No scandal of any sort attaches to the reputation 
of Louis Bourdaloue. He was a man of spotless 
fame, — unless it be a spot on his fame that he could 
please the most selfish of sinful monarchs well enough 
to be that monarch's chosen preacher during a longer 
time than any other pulpit orator whatever was tol- 
erated at Versailles. He is described by all who 
knew him as a man of gracious spirit. If he did 
not reprobate and denounce the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, that was rather of the age than of 
Bourdaloue. 

Sainte-Beuve, in a remarkably sympathetic appre- 
ciation of Bourdaloue, — free, contrary to the critic's 
wont, from hostile insinuation even, — regards it as 
part of the merit of this preacher that there is, and 



190 Classic French Course in English. 

that there can be, no biography of him. His public 
life is summed up in simply saying that he was a 
preacher. During thirty-four laborious and fruitful 
years he preached the doctrines of the Church ; 
and this is the sole account to be given of him, 
except, indeed, that in the confessional he was, 
all that time, learning those secrets of the human 
heart which he used to such effect in composing his 
sermons. He had very suave and winning ways 
as confessor, though he enjoined great strictness as 
preacher. This led a witty woman of his time to 
say of him: u Father Bourdaloue charges high in 
the pulpit, but he sells cheap in the confessional/' 
How much laxity he allowed as confessor, it is, of 
course, impossible to say. But his sermons remain 
to show that, though indeed he was severe and high 
in requirement as preacher, he did not fail to soften 
asperity by insisting on the goodness, while he 
insisted on the awfulness, of God. Still, it cannot 
be denied, that somehow the elaborate compliments 
which, as an established convention of his pulpit, 
he not infrequently delivered to Louis XIV., tended 
powerfully to make it appear that his stern denun- 
ciation of sin, which at first blush might seem 
directly levelled at the king, had in reality no appli- 
cation at all, or but the very gentlest application, to 
the particular case of his Most Christian Majesty. 

We begin our citations from Bourdaloue with an 
extract from a sermon of his on " A Perverted 
Conscience." The whole discourse is one well 



Bourdaloue. 191 

worth the study of any reader. It is a piece of 
searching psychological analysis, and pungent appli- 
cation to conscience. Bourdaloue, in his sermons, 
has always the air of a man seriously intent on pro- 
ducing practical results. There are no false motions. 
Every swaying of the preacher's weapon is a blow, 
and every blow is a hit. There is hardly another 
example in homiletic literature of such compactness, 
such solidity, such logical consecutiveness, such co- 
gency, such freedom from surplusage. Tare and tret 
are excluded. Every thing counts. You meet with 
two or three adjectives, and you at first naturally 
assume, that, after the usual manner of homilists, 
Bourdaloue has thrown these in without rigorously 
definite purpose, simply to heighten a general effect. 
Not at all. There follows a development of the 
preacher's thought, constituting virtually a distinct 
justification of each adjective employed. You soon 
learn that there is no random, no waste, in this 
man's words. But here is the promised extract 
from the sermon on "A Perverted Conscience." 
In it Bourdaloue depresses his gun, and discharges 
it point-blank at the audience before him. You can 
almost imagine } T ou see the ranks of ' 6 the great ' ' 
laid low. Alas ! one fears that, instead of biting 
the dust, those courtiers, with the king in the midst 
of them to set the example, only cried bravo in their 
hearts at the skill of the gunner : — 

I have said more particularly that in the world in which 
you live, — I mean the court, — the disease of a perverted con- 



192 Classic French Course in English. 

science is far more common, and far more difficult to be 
avoided ; and I am sure that in this you will agree with me. 
For it is at the court that the passions bear sway, that 
desires are more ardent, that self-interest is keener, and 
that, by infallible consequence, self-blinding is more easy, 
and consciences, even the most enlightened and the most . 
upright, become gradually perverted. It is at the court that 
the goddess of the world, I mean fortune, exercises over the 
minds of men, and in consequence over their consciences, a 
more absolute dominion. It is at the court that the aim to 
maintain one's self, the impatience to raise one's self, the 
frenzy to push one's self, the fear of displeasing, the desire 
of making one's self agreeable, produce consciences, which 
anywhere else would pass for monstrous, but which, finding 
themselves there authorized by custom, seem to have acquired 
a right of possession and of prescription. People, from 
living at court, and from no other cause than having lived 
there, are filled with these errors. Whatever uprightness of 
conscience they may have brought thither, by breathing its 
air and by hearing its language, they are habituated to 
iniquity, they come to have less horror of vice, and, after 
having long blamed it, a thousand times condemned it, they 
at last behold it with a more favorable eye, tolerate it, 
excuse it ; that is to say, without observing what is happen- 
ing, they make over their consciences, and, by insensible 
steps, from Christian, which they were, by little and little 
become quite worldly, and not far from pagan. 

What could surpass the adaptedness of such 
preaching as that to the need of the moment for 
which it was prepared ? And how did the libertine 
French monarch contrive to escape the force of truth 
like the following, with which the preacher immedi- 
ately proceeds? — 



Bourdaloue. 193 

You would say, and it really seems, that for the court, 
there are other principles of religion than for the rest of the 
world, and that the courtier has a right to make for himself 
a conscience different in kind and in quality from that of 
other men ; for such is the prevailing idea of the matter, — 
an idea well sustained, or rather unfortunately justified, by 
experience. . . . Nevertheless, my dear hearers, St. Paul 
assures us, that there is hut one God and one faith; and 
woe to the man who dividing Him, this one God, shall 
represent Him as at court less an enemy to human trans- 
gressions than He is outside of the court; or, severing this 
one faith, shall suppose it in the case of one class more 
indulgent than in the case of another. 

Bourdaloue, as Jesuit, could not but feel the 
power of Pascal in his tc Provincial Letters," con- 
stantly undermining the authority of his order. His 
preaching, as Sainte-Beuve well says, ma} T be con- 
sidered to have been, in the preacher's intention, 
one prolonged confutation of Pascal's immortal in- 
dictment. We borrow of Sainte-Beuve a short 
extract from Bourdaloue' s sermon on slander, 
which may serve as an instance to show with what 
adroitness the Jesuit retorted anonymously upon 
the Jansenist : — 

Behold one of the abuses of our time. Means have been 
found to consecrate slander, to change it into a virtue, and 
even into one of the holiest virtues — that means is, zeal for 
the glory of God. . . . Yv"e must humble those people, is the 
cry; and it is for the good of the Church to tarnish their 
reputation and to diminish their credit. That idea becomes, 
as it were, a principle; the conscience is fashioned accord- 
ingly, and there is nothing that is not permissible to a 



194 Classic French Course in English. 

motive so noble. You fabricate, you exaggerate, you give 
things a poisonous taint, you tell but half the truth ; you 
make your prejudices stand for indisputable facts ; you spread 
abroad a hundred falsehoods; you confound what is indi- 
vidual with what is general ; what one man has said that is 
bad, you pretend that all have said; and what many have 
said that is good, you pretend that nobody has said; and all 
that, once again, for the glory of God. For such direction 
of the intention justifies all that. Such direction of the in- 
tention will not suffice to justify a prevarication, but it is 
more than sufficient to justify calumny, provided only you 
are convinced that you are serving God thereby. 

In conclusion, we give a passage or two of Bourda- 
loue's sermon on "An Eternity of Woe." Stanch 
orthodoxy the reader will find here. President Ed- 
wards's discourse, " Sinners in the Hands of an 
Angry God," is not more unflinching. But what a 
relief of contrasted sweetness does Bourdaloue in- 
terpose in the first part of the ensuing extract, to 
set off the grim and grisly horror of that which is to 
follow ! We draw, for this case, from a translation, 
issued in Dublin under Roman-Catholic auspices, of 
select sermons by Bourdaloue. The translator, 
throughout his volume, has been highly loyal in 
spirit toward the great French preacher ; but this 
has not prevented much enfeebling by him of the 
style of his original : — 

There are some just, fervent, perfect souls, who, like chil- 
dren in the house of the Heavenly Father, strive to please 
and possess him. in order only to possess and to love him; 
and who, incessantly animated by this unselfish motive, 



Bourdaloue. 195 

inviolably adhere to his divine precepts, and lay it down as 
a rigorous and unalterable rule, to obey the least intimation 
of his will. They serve him with an affection entirely filial. 
But there are also dastards, worldlings, sinners, terrestrial 
and sensual men, who are scarcely susceptible of any other 
impressions than those of the judgments and vengeance 
of God. Talk to them of his greatness, of his perfections, of 
his benefits, or even of his rewards, and they will hardly 
listen to you; and, if they are prevailed upon to pay some 
attention and respect to your words, they will sound in 
their ears, but not reach their hearts. . . . Therefore, to 
move them, to stir them up, to awaken them from the 
lethargic sleep with which they are overwhelmed, the thun- 
der of divine wrath and the decree that condemns them to 
eternal flames must be dinned into their ears: " Depart from 
me, ye accursed, into everlasting fire" (Matt. xxv.). Make 
them consider attentively, and represent to them with all 
the force of grace, the consequences and horror of this 
word " eternal." . . . 

It is not imagination, it is pure reason and intelli- 
gence, that now in Bourdaloue goes about the busi- 
ness of impressing the thought of the dreadfulness 
of an eternity of woe. The effect produced is not 
that of the lightning-flash suddenly revealing the 
jaws agape of an unfathomable abyss directly before 
you. It is rather that of steady, intolerable press- 
ure gradually applied to crush, to annihilate, the 
soul : — 

. . . Struck with horror at so doleful a destiny, I apply 
to this eternity all the powers of my mind; I examine and 
scrutinize it in all its parts; and I survey, as it were, its 
whole dimensions. Moreover, to express it in more lively 
colors, and to represent it in my mind more conformably to 



196 Classic Fi^ench Course in English. 

the senses and the human understanding, I borrow com- 
parisons from the Fathers of the Church, and I make, if I 
may so speak, the same computations. I figure to myself 
all the stars of the firmament ; to this innumerable multi- 
tude I add all the drops of water in the bosom of the ocean ; 
and if this be not enough, I reckon, or at least endeavor to 
reckon, all the grains of sand on its shore. Then I interro- 
gate myself, I reason with myself, and I put to myself the 
question — If I had for as many ages, and a thousand times 
as many, undergone torments in that glowing fire which is 
kindled by the breath of the Lord in his anger to take 
eternal vengeance, would eternity be at an end? No; and 
why ? Because it is eternity, and eternity is endless. To 
number up the stars that shine in the heavens, to count the 
drops of water that compose the sea, to tell the grains of 
sand that lie upon the shore, is not absolutely impossible ; 
but to measure in eternity the number of days, of years, of 
ages, is what cannot be compassed, because the days, the 
years, and the ages are without number; or, to speak more 
properly, because in eternity there are neither days, nor 
years, nor ages, but a single, endless, infinite duration. 

To this thought I devote my mind. I imagine I see and 
rove through this same eternity, and discover no end, but 
find it to be always a boundless tract. I imagine the wide 
prospect lies open on all sides, and encompasseth me around ; 
that if I rise up, or if I sink down, or what way soever 
I turn my eyes, this eternity meets them; and that after a 
thousand efforts to get forward, I have made no progress, 
but find it still eternity. I imagine that after long revolu- 
tions of time, I behold in the midst of this eternity a damned 
soul, in the same state, in the same affliction, in the same 
misery still; and putting myself mentally in the place of 
this soul, I imagine that in this eternal punishment I feel 
myself continually devoured by that fire which nothing 
extinguishes ; that I continually shed those floods of 'tears 
which nothing can dry up; that I am continually gnawed 



Massillon. 197 

by the worm of conscience, which never dies; that I con- 
tinually express my despair and anguish by that gnashing 
of teeth, and those lamentable cries, which never can move 
the compassion of God. This idea of myself, this represen- 
tation, amazes and terrifies me. My whole body shudders, 
I tremble with fear, I am filled with horror, I have the same 
feelings as the royal prophet, when he cried, " Pierce thou 
my flesh with thy fear, for I am afraid of thy judgments." 

That was a touching tribute from the elder to the 
younger — tribute touching, whether wrung, per- 
force, from a proudly humble, or freely offered by 
a simply magnanimous, heart — when, like John the 
Baptist speaking of Jesus, Bourdaloue, growing 
old, said of Massillon, enjoying his swiftly crescent 
renown : " He must increase, and I must decrease." 
It was a true presentiment of the comparative for- 
tune of fame that impended for these two men. It 
was not, however, in the same path, but in a differ- 
ent, that Massillon outran Bourdalone. In his own 
sphere, that of unimpassioned appeal to reason and 
to conscience, Bourdaloue is still without a rival. 
No one else, certainly, ever earned, so well as he, 
the double title which his epigrammatic countrymen 
were once fond of bestowing upon him, — " The 
king of preachers, and the preacher of kings." 

Jean Baptiste Massillon became priest by his 
own internal sense of vocation to the office, against 
the preference of his family that he should become, 
like his father, a notary. He seems to have been 
by nature sincerely modest in spirit. He had to be 



198 Classic French Course in English. 

forced into the publicity of a preaching career at 
Paris. His ecclesiastical superior peremptorily re- 
quired at his hands the sacrifice of his wish to be 
obscure. He at once filled Paris with his fame. 
The inevitable consequence followed. He was sum- 
moned to preach before the kiug at Versailles. 
Here he received, as probably he deserved, that 
celebrated compliment in epigram, from Louis XIV. : 
"In hearing some preachers, I feel pleased with 
them ; in hearing you, I feel displeased with my- 
self." 

It must not, however, be supposed that Massillon 
preached like a prophet Nathan saying to King 
David, "Thou art the man;" or like a John the 
Baptist saying to King Herod, "It is not lawful 
for thee to have leer ; " or like a John Knox de- 
nouncing Queen Mary. Massillon, if he was stern, 
was suavely stern. He complimented the king. 
The sword with which he wounded was wreathed 
deep with flowers. It is difficult not to feel that 
some unspoken understanding subsisted between 
the preacher and the king, which permitted the king- 
to separate the preacher from the man when Mas- 
sillon used that great plainness of speech to his 
sovereign. The king did not, however, often invite 
this master of eloquence to make the royal con- 
science displacent with itself. Bourdaloue was osten- 
sibly as outspoken as Massillon ; but somehow that 
Jesuit preacher contented the king to be his hearer 
during as many as ten annual seasons, against the 



Massillon. 199 

one or two only that Massillon preached at court 
before Louis. 

The work of Massillon generally judged, though 
according to Sainte-Beuve not wisely judged, to be 
his choicest, is contained in that volume of his 
which goes by the name of ;t Le Petit Caremc," — 
literally, "The Little Lent," — a collection of ser- 
mons preached during a Lent before the king's great- 
grandson and successor, 3-outhful Louis XV. These 
sermons especially have given to their author a 
fame that is his by a title perhaps absolutely unique 
in literature. We know no other instance of a 
writer, limited in his production strictly to sermons, 
who holds his place in the first rank of authorship 
simply by virtue of supreme mastership in liteiary 
style. 

Still, from the text of his printed discourses, — 
admirable, exquisite, ideal compositions in point of 
form as these are, — it will be found impossible to 
conceive adequately the living eloquence of Massil- 
lon. There are interesting traditions of the effects 
produced by particular passages of particular ser- 
mons of his. When Louis XIV. died, Massillon 
preached his funeral sermon. He began with that 
celebrated single sentence of exordium which, it is 
said, brought his whole audience, by instantaneous, 
simultaneous impulse, in a body to their feet. The 
modern reader will experience some difficulty in 
comprehending at once why that perfectly common- 
place-seeming expression of the preacher should 



200 Classic French Course in English. 

have produced an effect so powerful. The element 
of the opportune, the apposite, the fit, is always 
great part of the secret of eloquence. Nothing 
more absolutely appropriate can be conceived than 
was the sentiment, the exclamation, with which 
Massillon opened that funeral sermon. The image 
and symbol of earthly greatness, in the person of 
Louis XXV., had been shattered under the touch 
of iconoclast death. "God only is great !" said 
the preacher ; and all was said. Those four short 
words had uttered completely, and with a simplicity 
incapable of being surpassed, the thought that 
usurped every breast. It is not the surprise of 
some striking new thought that is the most eloquent 
thing. The most eloquent thing is the surprise of 
that one word, suddenly spoken, which completely 
expresses some thought, present already and upper- 
most, but silent till now, awaiting expression, in a 
multitude of minds. This most eloquent thing it 
was which, from Massillon' s lips that day, moved 
his susceptible audience to rise, like one man, and 
bow in mute act of submission to the truth of his 
words. The inventive and curious reader may exer- 
cise his ingenuity at leisure. He will strive in vain 
to conceive any other exordium than Massillon' s 
that would have matched the occasion presented. 

There is an admirable anecdote of the pulpit, 
which — though since often otherwise applied — had, 
perhaps, its first application to Massillon. Some 
one congratulating the orator, as he came down 



Massillon. 201 

from his pulpit, on the eloquence of the sermon just 
preached, that wise self-knower fenced by replying, 
" Ah, the devil has already apprised me of that ! " 
The recluse celibate preacher was one day asked 
whence he derived that marvellous knowledge which 
he displayed of the passions, the weaknesses, the 
follies, the sins, of human nature. tk From m}^ 
own heart,''' was his reply „ Source sufficient, per- 
haps ; but from the confessional, too, one may con- 
fidently add. 

There is probably no better brief, quotable pas- 
sage to represent Massillon at his imaginative highest 
in eloquence, than that most celebrated one of all, 
occurring toward the close of his memorable sermon 
on the ^ Fewness of the Elect." The effect at- 
tending the delivery of this passage, on both of 
the two recorded occasions on which the sermon was 
preached, is reported to have been remarkable. 
The manner of the orator — downcast, as with the 
inward oppression of the same solemnity that he, 
in speaking, cast like a spell on the audience — in- 
definitely heightened the magical power of the awful 
conception excited. Not Bourdaloue himself, with 
that preternatural skill of his to probe the conscience 
of man to its innermost secret, could have exceeded 
the heart-searching rigor with which, in the earlier 
part of the discourse, Massillon had put to the rack 
the quivering consciences of his hearers. The ter- 
rors of the Lord, the shadows of the world to come, 
were thus already on all hearts. So much as this, 



202 Classic French Course in English. 

Bourdaloue, too, with his incomparable dialectic, 
could have accomplished. But there immediately 
follows a culmination in power, such as was dis- 
tinctly beyond the height of Bourdaloue. Genius 
must be superadded to talent if you would have the 
supreme, either in poetry or in eloquence. There 
was an extreme point in Massillon's discourse at 
which mere reason, having done, and clone terribly, 
its utmost, was fain to confess that it could not go 
a single step farther. At that extreme point, sud- 
denly, inexhaustible imagination took up the part of 
exhausted reason. Reason had made men afraid; 
imagination now appalled them. Massillon said : — 

I confine myself to you, my brethren, who are gathered 
here. I speak no longer of the rest of mankind. I look at 
you as if you were the only ones on the earth; and here 
is the thought that seizes me, and that terrifies me. I make 
the supposition that this is your last hour, and the end of 
the world; that the heavens are about to open above your 
heads, that Jesns Christ is to appear in his glory in the 
midst of this sanctuary, and that you are gathered here only 
to wait for him, and as trembling criminals on whom is to 
be pronounced either a sentence of grace or a decree of eter- 
nal death. For, vainly do you flatter yourselves; you will 
die such in character as you are to-day. All those impulses 
toward change with which you amuse yourselves, you will 
amuse yourselves with them down to the bed of death. Such 
is the experience of all generations. The only thing new 
you will then find in yourselves will be, perhaps, a reckoning 
a trifle larger than that which you would to-day have to ren- 
der; and according to what you would be if you were this 
moment to be judged, you may almost determine what will 
befall you at the termination of your life. 



Massillon. 203 

Now I ask you, and I ask it smitten with terror, not 
separating in this matter my lot from yours, and putting 
myself into the same frame of mind into which I desire you 
to come, — I ask you, then, If Jesus Christ were to appear in 
this sanctuary, in the midst of this assembly, the most illus- 
trious in the world, to pass judgment on us, to draw the 
dread line of distinction between the goats and the sheep, 
do you believe that the majority of all of us who are here 
would be set on his right hand ? Do you believe that things 
would even be equal ? Nay, do you believe there would be 
found so many as the ten righteous men whom anciently the 
Lord could not find in five whole cities ? 1 put the question 
to you, but you know not; I know not myself. Thou only, 
O my God, knowest those that belong to thee! But if we 
know not those who belong to him, at least we know that 
sinners do not belong to him. Now, of what classes of per- 
sons do the professing Christians in this assembly consist ? 
Titles and dignities must be counted for naught; of these 
you shall be stripped before Jesus Christ. Who make up 
this assembly ? Sinners, in great number, who do not wish 
to be converted; in still greater number, sinners who would 
like it, but who put off their conversion; many others who 
would be converted, only to relapse into sin; finally, a mul- 
titude who think they have no need of conversion. You 
have thus made up the company of the reprobate. Cut off 
these four classes of sinners from this sacred assembly, for 
they will be cut off from it at the great day ! Stand forth 
now, ye righteous! where are you ? Remnant of Israel, pass 
to the right hand ! True w r heat of Jesus Christ, disengage 
yourselves from this chaff, doomed to the fire ! O God ! where 
are thine elect ? and what remains there for thy portion ? 

Brethren, our perdition is well-nigh assured, and we do 
not give it a thought. Even if in that dread separation 
which one day shall be made, there were to be but a single 
sinner out of this assembly found on the side of the repro- 
bate, and if a voice from heaven should come to give us 



204 Classic French Course in English. 

assurance of the fact in this sanctuary, without pointing out 
the person intended, who among us would not fear that he 
might himself be the wretch ? Who among us would not 
at once recoil upon his conscience, to inquire whether his 
sins had not deserved that penalty ? Who among us would 
not, seized with dismay, ask of Jesus Christ, as did once the 
apostles, " Lord, is it I ? " 

What is there wanting in such eloquence as the 
foregoing ? Wherein lies its deficiei^ of power to 
penetrate and subdue? Voltaire avowed that he 
found the sermons of Massillon to be among "the 
most agreeable books we have in our language. I 
love," he went on, t4 to have them read to me at 
table.' ' There are things in Massillon that Voltaire 
should not have delighted to read, or to hear read, — 
things that should have made him wince and revolt, 
if they did not make him yield and be converted. 
W 7 as there fault in the preacher? Did he preach 
with professional, rather than with personal, zeal? 
Did his hearers feel themselves secretly acquitted 
by the man, at the self-same moment at which they 
were openly condemned by the preacher? It is im- 
possible to say. But Massillon 's virtue was not 
lofty and regal ; however it may have been free from 
just reproach. He was somewhat too capable of 
compliance. He was made bishop of Clermont, and 
his promotion cost him the anguish of having to 
help consecrate a scandalously unfit candidate as 
archbishop of Cambray. Massillon's, however, is 
a fair, if not an absolutely spotless, fame. Hierarch 



Fenelon. 205 

as he was, and orthodox Catholic, this most elegant 
of eloquent orators had a liberal strain in his blood 
which allied him politically with the " philosophers " 
of the time succeeding. He, with Fenelon, and 
perhaps with Eacine, makes seem less abrupt the 
transition in France from the age of absolutism to 
the age of revolt and final revolution. There is 
distinct advance in Massillon, and advance more 
than is accounted for by his somewhat later time, 
toward the easier modern spirit in church and in 
state, from the high, unbending austerity of that 
antique pontiff and minister, Bossuet. 



XIII. 

FENELON. 
1651-1715. 



If Bossuet is to Frenchmen a synonym for sub- 
limity, no less to them is Fenelon a synonym for 
saintliness. From the French point of view, one 
might say, " the sublime Bossuet," Ci the saintly 
Fenelon," somewhat as one says, " the learned Sei- 
dell," " the judicious Hooker." It is as much a 
French delight to idealize Fenelon an archangel 
Raphael, affable and mild, as it is to glorify Bossuet 
a Michael in majesty and power. 



206 Classic French Course in English* 

But saintliness of character was in Fenelon com- 
mended to the world by equal charm of person and 
of genius. The words of Milton describing Eve 
might be applied, with no change but that of gen- 
der, to Fenelon. both the exterior and the interior 
man : — 

Grace was in all his steps, heaven in his eye, 
In every gesture dignity and love. 

The consent is general among those who saw 
Fenelon, and have left behind them their testimony, 
that alike in person, in character, and in genius, he 
was such as we thus describe him. 

Twice, in his youth, he was smitten to the heart 
with a feeling of vocation to be a missionary. Both 
times he was thwarted by the intervention of friends. 
The second time, he wrote disclosing his half- 
romantic aspiration in a glowing letter of confidence 
and friendship to Bossuet, his senior by many years, 
but not yet become famous. Young Fenelon's friend 
Bossuet was destined later to prove a bitter antago- 
nist, almost a personal foe. 

Until he was forty-two years old, Francois Fene- 
lon lived in comparative retirement, nourishing his 
genius with study, with contemplation, with choice 
societ} T . He experimented in writing verse. Not 
succeeding to his mind, he turned to prose composi- 
tion, and leading the way, in a new species of 
literature, for Rousseau, for Chateaubriand, for 
Lamartine, and for many others, to follow, went on 



FSnelon. 207 

writing what, in ceasing to be verse, did not cease 
to be poetry. 

The great world will presently involve Fenelon in 
the currents of history. Louis XIV., grown old, 
and become as selfishly greedy now of personal sal- 
vation as all his life he has been selfishly greedy of 
personal glory, seeks that object of his soul by 
serving the church in the wholesale conversion of 
Protestants. He revokes the Edict of Nantes, which 
had secured religious toleration for the realm, and 
proceeds to dragoon the Huguenots into conformity 
with the Roman-Catholic church. The reaction in 
public sentiment against such rigors grew a cry that 
had to be silenced. Fenelon was selected to visit 
the heretic provinces, and win them to willing sub- 
mission. He stipulated that every form of coercion 
should cease, and went to conquer all with love. 
His success was remarkable. But not even Fenelon 
quite escaped the infection of violent zeal for the 
Church. It seems not to be given to any man to 
rise wholly superior to the spirit of the world in 
which he lives. 

The lustre of Fenelon' s name, luminous from the 
triumphs of his mission among the Protestants, was 
sufficient to justify the choice of this man, a man 
both by nature and by culture so ideally formed for 
the office as was he, to be tutor to the heir pro- 
spective of the French monarchy. The Duke of 
Burgundy, grandson to Louis XIV., was accord- 
ingly put under the charge of Fenelon to be trained 



208 Classic French Course in English. 

for future kingship. Never, probably, in the his- 
tory of mankind, has there occurred a case in which 
the victory of a teacher could be more illustrious 
than actually was the victory of Fenelon as teacher 
to this scion of the house of Bourbon. We shall 
be giving our readers a relishable taste of St. Simon, 
the celebrated memoir- writer of the age of Louis 
XIV., if out of the portrait in words, drawn by him 
from the life, of Fenelon's princely pupil, we trans- 
fer here a few strong lines to our pages. St. Simon 
says : — 

In the first place, it must be said that Monseigneur the 
Duke of Burgundy had by nature a most formidable dispo- 
sition, lie was passionate to the extent of wishing to dash 
to pieces his clocks when they struck the hour which called 
him to what he did not like, and of flying into the utmost 
rage against the rain if it interfered with what he wanted to 
do. Resistance threw him into paroxysms of fury. I speak 
of what I have often witnessed in his early youth. More- 
over, an ungovernable impulse drove him into whatever 
indulgence, bodily or mental, was forbidden him. His sar- 
casm was so much the more cruel as it was witty and 
piquant, and as it seized with precision upon every point 
open to ridicule. All this was sharpened by a vivacity of 
body and of mind that proceeded to the degree of impetuosity, 
and that during his early days never permitted him to learn 
any thing except by doing two things at once. Every form 
of pleasure he loved with a violent avidity, and all this with 
a pride and a haughtiness inrpossible to describe; danger- 
ously wise, moreover, to judge of men and things, and to 
detect the weak point in a train of reasoning, and to reason 
himself more cogently and more profoundly than his teach- 
ers. But at the same time, as soon as his passion was spent, 



FSnelon. 209 

reason resumed her sway; he felt his faults, he acknowledged 
them, and sometimes with such chagrin that his rage, was 
rekindled. A mind lively, alert, penetrating, stiffening 
itself against obstacles, excelling literally in every thing. 
The prodigy is, that in a very short time piety and grace 
made of him a different being, and transformed faults so 
numerous and so formidable into virtues exactly opposite. 

St. Simon attributes to Fenelon "every virtue 
under heaven ; ' ' but his way was to give to God 
rather than to man the praise of the remarkable 
change which, during Fenelon' s charge of the Duke 
of Burgundy, came over the character of the prince. 

The grandfather survived the grandson ; and it 
was never put to the stern proof of historical ex- 
periment, whether Fenelon had indeed turned out 
one Bourbon entirely different from all the other 
members, earlier or later, of that ro} 7 al line. 

Before; however, the Duke of Burgundy was thus 
snatched away from the perilous prospect of a 
throne, his beloved teacher was parted from him, 
not indeed by death, but by what, to the archbishop's 
susceptible and suffering spirit, was worse than death, 
— by t; disgrace." The disgrace was such as has 
ever since engaged for its subject the interest, the 
sympathy, and the admiration, of mankind. Fene- 
lon lost the royal favor. That was all, — for the 
piesent, — but that was much. He was banished 
from court, and he ceased to be preceptor to the 
Duke of Burgundy. The king, in signal severity, 
used his own hand to strike Fenelon 's name from 



210 Classic French Course in English. 

the list of the household of his grandson and heir. 
The archbishop — for Fenelon had previously been 
made archbishop of Cambray — returned into his 
diocese as into an exile. But his cup of humiliation 
was by no means full. Bossuet will stain his own 
glory by following his exiled former pupil and 
friend, with hostile pontifical rage, to crush him in 
his retreat. 

The occasion was a woman, a woman with the 
charm of genius and of exalted character, a Chris- 
tian, a saint, but a mystic — it was Madame Guyon. 
Madame Guyon taught that it was possible to love 
God for himself alone, purely and disinterestedly. 
Fenelon received the doctrine, and Madame Guyon 
was patronized by Madame de Maintenon. Bossuet 
scented heresy. He was too much a u natural man " 
to understand Madame Guyon. The king was like 
the prelate, his minister, in spirit, and in consequent 
incapacity. It was resolved that Fenelon must con- 
demn Madame Guyon. But Fenelon would not. 
He was very gentle, very conciliatory, but in fine 
he would not. Controvers}' ensued, haughty, magis- 
terial, domineering, on the part of Bossuet ; on the 
part of Fenelon, meek, docile, suasive. The world 
wondered, and watched the duel. Fenelon finally 
did what king James's translators misleadingly 
make Job wish that his adversary had done, — he 
wrote a book, "The Maxims of the Saints." In 
this book, he sought to show that the accepted, and 
even canonized, teachers of the Church had taught 



FSnelon. 211 

the doctrine for which, in his own case and in the 
case of Madame Guyon, condemnation was now 
invoked. Bossuet was pope at Paris; and he, in 
full presence, denounced to the monarch the heresy 
of Fenelon. At this moment of crisis for Fenelon, 
it happened that news was brought him of the burn- 
ing of his mansion at Cambray with all his books 
and manuscripts. It will always be remembered 
that Fenelon only said : " It is better so than if it 
had been the cottage of a poor laboring-man." 

Madame de Maintenon, till now his friend, with 
perfectly frigid facility separated herself from the 
side of the accused. The controversy was carried 
to Rome, where at length Fenelon' s book was con- 
demned, — condemned mildly, but condemned. The 
pope is said to have made the remark that Fenelon 
erred by loving God too much, and Fenelon' s an- 
tagonists by loving their fellow-man too little. 
Fenelon bowed to the authority of the Church, and 
meekly in his own cathedral confessed his error. 
It was a logical thing for him, as loyal Catholic, to 
do ; and he did it with a beautiful grace of humility. 
The Protestant spirit, however, rebels on his behalf, 
and finds it difficult even to admire the manner in 
which was done by him a thing that seems so unfit 
to have been done by him at all. Bossuet did not 
long survive his inglorious triumph over so much 
sanctity of personal character, over so much difficult 
and beautiful height of doctrinal and practical in- 
struction to virtue. Fenelon seems to have been 



212 Classic French Course in English. 

reported as preaching a funeral sermon on the dead 
prelate. " I have wept and prayed," he wrote to a 
friend, " for this old instructor of my youth ; but it 
is not true that I celebrated his obsequies in my 
cathedral, and preached his funeral sermon. Such 
affectation, you know, is foreign to my nature." 
The iron must have gone deep, to wring from that 
gentle bosom even so much cry as this of wounded 
feeling. 

It is hard to tell what might now have befallen 
Fenelon, in the way of good fortune, — he might 
even have been recalled to court, and re-installed 
in his office of tutor to the prince, — had not a sin- 
ister incident, not to have been looked for, at an 
inopportune moment occurred. The 4t Telemachus " 
appeared in print, and kindled a sudden flame of 
popular feeling which instantly spread in universal 
conflagration over the face of Europe. This com- 
position of Fenelon' s the author had written to 
convey, under a form of quasi-poetical fiction, les- 
sons of wisdom in government to the mind of his 
royal pupil. The existence of the manuscript book 
would seem to have been intended to be a secret 
from the king, — indeed, from almost every one, 
except the pupil himself for whose use it was made. 
But a copyist proved false to his trust, and furnished 
a copy of u Telemachus " to a printer in Holland, 
who lost no time in publishing a book so likety to 
sell. But the sale of the book surpassed all expec- 
tation. Holland not only, but Belgium, Germany, 



F&nelon. 213 

France, and England multiplied copies, as fast as 
they could ; still, Europe could not get copies as fast 
as it wanted them. 

The secret of such popularity did not lie simply in 
the literary merits of ct Telemachus." It lay more in 
a certain interpretation that the book was supposed to 
bear. ; * Telemachus " was understood to be a covert 
criticism of Louis XIV., and of the principle of 
absolute monarchy embodied in him. This imputed 
intention of the book could not fail to become known 
at Versailles. The result, of course, was fatal, 
and finally fatal, to the prospects, whatever these 
may have been, of Fenelon's restoration to favor at 
court. The archbishop thenceforward was left to 
do in comparative obscurity the duties of his episco- 
pal office in his diocese of Cambray. He devoted 
himself, with exemplary and touching fidelity, to the 
interests of his flock, loving them and loved by them, 
till he died. It was an entirely worthy and ade- 
quate employment of his powers. The only abate- 
ment needful from the praise to be bestowed upon 
his behavior in this pastoral relation is. that he 
suffered himself sometimes to think of his position 
as one of •* disgrace." His reputation meantime 
for holy character and conduct was European. His 
palace at Cambray. hospitably open ever to the 
resort of suffering need, indeed almost his whole 
diocese, lying on the frontier of France, was. by 
mutual consent of contending armies, treated in war 
as a kind of mutual inviolable ground, invested with 



214 Classic French Course in English. 

privilege of sanctuary. It was an instructive example 
of the serene and beautiful ascendency sometimes 
divinely accorded to illustrious personal goodness. 

There had been a moment, even subsequently to 
the affair of the " Telemachus " publication, when 
it looked as if, after long delay, a complete worldly 
triumph for F6nelon was assured, and was near. 
The father of the Duke of Burgundy died, and 
nothing then seemed to stand between Fenelon 's 
late pupil and the throne, — nothing but the preca- 
rious life of an aged monarch, visibly approaching 
the end. The Duke of Burgundy, through all 
changes, had remained unchangingly fast in his 
affectionate loyalty to Fenelon. Sternly forbidden, 
by the jealous and watchful king, his grandfather, 
to communicate with his old teacher, he yet had 
found means to send to Fenelon, from time to time, 
reassuring signals of his trust and his love. Fene- 
lon was now, in all eyes, the predestined prime 
minister of a new reign about to commence. Through 
devoted friends of hi.: own, near to the person of the 
prince at court, Fenelon sent minutes of advice to 
his pupil, which outlined a whole beneficent policy 
of liberal monarchical rule. A new day seemed 
dawning for France. The horrible reaction of the 
Regency and of Louis XV. might, perhaps, have 
been averted, and, with that spared to France, the 
Revolution itself might have been accomplished with- 
out the Revolution. But it was not to be. The 
Duke of Burgundy first buried his wife, and then, 



Tendon. 215 

within a few clays, followed her himself to the 
grave. He died sincerely rejoicing that God had 
taken him awa} T from the dread responsibility of 
reigning. 

" All my ties are broken/' mourned Fenelon; 
" there is no longer any thing to bind me to the 
earth." In truth, the teacher survived his pupil but 
two or three years. When he died, his sovereign, 
gloomy with well-grounded apprehension for the 
future of his realm, said, with tardy revival of rec- 
ognition for the virtue that had perished in Fenelon : 
64 Here was a man who could have served us well 
under the disasters by which my kingdom is about 
to be assailed ! ' ' 

Fenelon 's literary productions are various ; but 
they all have the common character of being works 
written for the sake of life, rather than for the sake 
of literature. They were inspired each by a practi- 
cal purpose, and adapted each to a particular occa- 
sion. His treatise on the " Education of Girls" 
was written for the use of a mother who desired 
instruction on the topic from Fenelon. His argu- 
ment on the 4i Being of a God" was prepared as a 
duty of his preceptorship to the prince. But the 
one book of Fenelon which was an historical event 
when it appeared, and which stands an indestructible 
classic in literature, is the ;i Telemachus." It re- 
mains for us briefly to give some idea of this book. 

The first thing to be said is, that those are mis- 
taken who suppose themselves to have obtained a 



216 Classic French Course in English. 

true idea of "Telemachus" from having partly 
read it at school, as an exercise in French. The 
essence of the work lies beyond those few opening 
pages to which the exploration of school-boys and 
school-girls is generally limited. This masterpiece 
of Fenelon is much more than a charming piece of 
romantic and sentimental poetry in prose. It is 
a kind of epic, indeed, like the u Odyssey," only 
written in rhythmical prose instead of rhythmical 
verse; but, unlike the "Odyssey," it is an idyllic 
epic written with an ulterior purpose of moral and 
political didactics. It was designed as a manual of 
instruction, — instruction made delightful to a prince, 
— to inculcate the duties incumbent on a sovereign. 
Telemachus, our readers will remember, was the 
son of Ulysses. Fenelon' s story relates the adven- 
tures encountered by Telemachus, in search for his 
father, so long delayed on his return from Troy to 
Ithaca. Telemachus is imagined by Fenelon to be 
attended by Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, masked 
from his recognition, as well as from the recog- 
nition of others, under the form of an old man. 
Minerva, of course, constantly imparts the wisest 
counsel to young Telemachus, who has his weak- 
nesses, as had the young Duke of Burgundy, but 
who is essentially well-disposed, as Fenelon hoped 
his royal pupil would finally turn out to be. Nothing 
can exceed the urbanity and grace with which the 
delicate business is conducted by Fenelon, of teach- 
ing a bad prince, with a very bad example set him 



Fenelon. 217 

by his grandfather, to be a good king. The style 
in which the story is told, and in which the advice 
is insinuated, is exquisite, is beyond praise. The 
" soft delicious V stream of sound runs on, as from 
a fountain, and like " linked sweetness long drawn 
out." Never had prose a flow of melody more lus- 
cious. It is perpetual ravishment to the ear. The 
invention, too, of incident is fruitful, while the land- 
scape and coloring are magical for beauty. We give 
a few extracts, to be read with that application to 
Louis XIV., and the state of France, in mind, which, 
when the book was first printed, gave it such an 
exciting interest in the eyes of Europe. Tele- 
machus, after the manner of iEneas to Queen Dido, 
is relating to the goddess Calypso, into whose island 
he has come, the adventures that have previously 
befallen him. He says that he, with Mentor (Mi- 
nerva in disguise), found himself in Crete. Mentor 
had been there before, and was ready to tell Tele- 
machus all about the country. Telemachus was 
naturally interested to learn respecting the Cretan 
monarchy. Mentor, he says, informed him as fol- 
lows : — 

The king's authority over the subject is absolute, but the 
authority of the law is absolute over him. His power to do 
good is unlimited, but he is restrained from doing evil. The 
laws have put the people into his hands, as the most valuable 
deposit, upon condition that he shall treat them as his chil- 
dren. It is the intent of the law that the wisdom and equity 
of one man shall be the happiness of many, and not that the 
wretchedness and slavery of many should gratify the pride 



218 Classic French Course in English. 

and luxury of one. The king ought to possess nothing more 
than the subject, except what is necessary to alleviate the 
fatigue of his station, and impress upon the minds of the 
people a reverence of that authority by which the laws are 
executed. Moreover, the king should indulge himself less, 
as well in ease as in pleasure, and should be less disposed to 
the pomp and the pride of life than any other man. He 
ought not to be distinguished from the rest of mankind 
by the greatness of his wealth, or the vanity of bis enjoy- 
ments, but by superior wisdom, more heroic virtue, and more 
splendid glory. Abroad he ought to be the defender of his 
country, by commanding her armies; and at home the judge 
of his people, distributing justice among them, improving 
their morals, and increasing their felicity. It is not for him- 
self that the gods have intrusted him with royalty. He is 
exalted above individuals, only that he may be the servant 
of the people. To the public he owes all his time, all his 
attention, and all his love ; he deserves dignity only in pro- 
portion as he gives up private enjoyments for the public 
good. 

Pretty sound doctrine, the foregoing, on the sub- 
ject of the duties devolving on a king. The 
" paternal " idea, to be sure, of government is in it ; 
but there is the idea, too, of limited or constitutional 
monarchy. The spirit of just and liberal political 
thought had, it seems, not been wholly extinguished, 
even at the court, by that oppression of mind — an 
oppression seldom, if ever, in human history ex- 
ceeded — which was enforced under the unmitigated 
absolutism of Louis XIV. The literature that, with 
Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, the Encyclopae- 
dists, prepared the Revolution, had already begun 
virtually to be written when Fenelon wrote his 



FSnelon. 219 

" Telemachus." It is easy to see why the fame of 
Fenelon should by exception have been dear even 
to the hottest infidel haters of that ecclesiastical 
hierarchy to which the archbishop of Cambray him- 
self belonged. This lover of liberty, this gentle 
rebuker of kings, was of the free-thinkers, at least 
in the sympathy of political thought. Nay, the 
K evolution itself is foreshown in a remarkable 
glimpse of conjectural prophecy which occurs in the 
" Telemachus. ,, Idomeneus is a headstrong king, 
whom Mentor is made by the author to reprove and 
instruct, for the Duke of Burgundy's benefit. To 
Idomeneus — a character taken, and not implausibly 
taken, to have been suggested to Fenelon by the 
example of Louis XIV. — to this imaginary counter- 
part of the reigning monarch of France, Mentor 
holds the following language. How could the sequel 
of Bourbon despotism in France — a sequel sus- 
pended now for a time, but two or three generations 
later to be dreadfully visited on the heirs of Louis 
XIY. — have been more truly foreshadowed? The 
" Telemachus : " — 

Remember, that the sovereign who is most absolute is 
always least powerful; he seizes upon all, and his grasp 
is ruin. He is, indeed, the sole proprietor of whatever his 
state contains; but, for that reason, his state contains noth- 
ing of value: the fields are uncultivated, and almost a desert; 
the towns lose some of their few inhabitants every day; and 
trade every day declines. The king, who must cease to be a 
king when he ceases to have subjects, and who is great only 
in virtue of his people, is himself insensibly losing his 



220 Classic French Course in English. 

character and his power, as the number of his people, from 
whom alone both are derived, insensibly diminishes. His 
dominions are at length exhausted of money and of men: 
the loss of men is the greatest and the most irreparable he 
can sustain. Absolute power degrades every subject to a 
slave. The tyrant is nattered, even to an appearance of 
adoration, and every one trembles at the glance of his eye; 
but, at the least revolt, this enormous power perishes by its 
own excess. It derived no strength from the love of the 
people ; it wearied and provoked all that it could reach, and 
rendered every individual of the state impatient of its con- 
tinuance. At the first stroke of opposition, the idol is 
overturned, broken to pieces, and trodden under foot. Con- 
tempt, hatred, fear, resentment, distrust, and every other 
passion of the soul, unite against so hateful a despotism. 
The king who, in his vain prosperity, found no man bold 
enough to tell him the truth, in his adversity finds no man 
kind enough to excuse his faults, or to defend him against 
his enemies. 

So much is perhaps enough to indicate the politi- 
cal drift of the " Telemachus." That drift is, in- 
deed, observable everywhere throughout the book. 

We conclude our exhibition of this fine classic, 
by letting Fenelon appear more purely now in his 
character as dreamer and poet. Young Prince Tel- 
emachus has, Ulysses-like, and ^Eneas-like, his 
descent into Hades. This incident affords Fenelon 
opportunity to exercise his best powers of awful and 
of lovely imagining and describing. Christian ideas 
are, in this episode of the " Telemachus," superin- 
duced upon pagan, after a manner hard, perhaps, to 
reconcile with the verisimilitude required by art, but 
at least productive of very noble and very beautiful 



Fenelon. 221 

results. First, one glimpse of Tartarus as conceived 
by Fenelon. It is the spectacle of kings who on 
earth abused their power, that Telernachus is be- 
holding : — 

Telernachus observed the countenance of these criminals 
to be pale and ghastly, strongly expressive of the torment 
they suffered at the heart. They looked inward with a self- 
abhorrence, now inseparable from their existence. Their 
crimes themselves had become their punishment, and it 
was not necessary that greater should be inflicted. They 
haunted them like hideous spectres, and continually started 
up before them in all their enormity. They wished for a 
second death, that might separate them from these minis- 
ters of vengeance, as the first had separated their spirits 
from the body, — a death that might at once extinguish all 
consciousness and sensibility. They called upon the depths 
of hell to hide them from the persecuting beams of truth, in 
impenetrable darkness ; but they are reserved for the cup of 
vengeance, which, though they drink of it forever, shall be 
ever full. The truth, from which they fled, has overtaken 
them, an invincible and unrelenting enemy. The ray which 
once might have illuminated them, like the mild radiance 
of the day, now pierces them like lightning, — a fierce and 
fatal fire, that, without injury to the external parts, infixes 
a burning torment at the heart. By truth, now an avenging 
flame, the very soul is melted like metal in a furnace; it 
dissolves all, but destroys nothing; it disunites the first 
elements of life, yet the sufferer can never die. He is, as it 
were, divided against himself, without rest and without 
comfort; animated by no vital principle, but the rage that 
kindles at his own misconduct, and the dreadful madness 
that results from despair. 

If the " perpetual feast of nectared sweets " that 
the "Telernachus" affords, is felt at times to be 



222 Classic French Course in English. 

almost cloying, it is not, as our readers have now 
seen, for want of occasional contrasts of a bitter- 
ness sufficiently mordant and drastic. But the 
didactic purpose is never lost sight of by the author. 
Here is an aspect of the Elysium found by Telema- 
chus. How could any thing be more delectably 
conceived and described? The translator, Dr. 
Hawkesworth, is animated to an English style that 
befits the sweetness of his original. The ' ' Telema- 
chus : " — 

In this place resided all the good kings who had wisely 
governed mankind from the beginning of time. They were 
separated from the rest of the just ; for, as wicked princes 
suffer more dreadful punishment than other offenders in 
Tartarus, so good kings enjoy infinitely greater felicity than 
other lovers of virtue, in the fields of Elysium. 

Telemachus advanced towards these kings, whom he found 
in groves of delightful fragrance, reclining upon the downy 
turf, where the flowers and herbage were perpetually re- 
newed. A thousand rills wandered through these scenes of 
delight, and refreshed the soil with a gentle and unpolluted 
wave ; the song of innumerable birds echoed in the groves. 
Spring strewed the ground with her flowers, while at the 
same time autumn loaded the trees with her fruit. In this 
place the burning heat of the dog-star was never felt, and 
the stormy north was forbidden to scatter over it the frosts 
of winter. Neither War that thirsts for blood, nor Envy that 
bites with an envenomed tooth, like the vipers that are 
wreathed around her arms, and fostered in her bosom, nor 
Jealousy, nor Distrust, nor Fears, nor vain Desires, invade 
these sacred domains of peace. The day is here without 
end, and the shades of night are unknown. Here the bodies 
of the blessed are clothed with a pure and lambent light, as 



FSnelon. 223 

with a garment. This light does not resemble that vouch- 
safed to mortals upon earth, which is rather darkness visible; 
it is rather a celestial glory than a light — an emanation 
that penetrates the grossest body with more subtilety than 
the rays of the sun penetrate the purest crystal, which rather 
strengthens than dazzles the sight, and diffuses through the 
soul a serenity which no language can express. By this 
ethereal essence the blessed are sustained in everlasting life; 
it pervades them ; it is incorporated with them, as food with 
the mortal body ; they see it, they feel it, they breathe it, 
and it produces in them an inexhaustible source of serenity 
and joy. It is a fountain of delight, in which they are 
absorbed as fishes are absorbed in the sea ; they wish for 
nothing, and, having nothing, they possess all things. This 
celestial light satiates the hunger of the soul ; every desire 
is precluded; and they have a fulness of joy which sets 
them above all that mortals seek with such restless ardor, 
to fill the vacuity that aches forever in their breast. All 
the delightful objects that surround them are disregarded; 
for their felicity springs up within, and, being perfect, can 
derive nothing from without. So the gods, satiated with 
nectar and ambrosia, disdain, as gross and impure, all the 
dainties of the most luxurious table upon earth. From 
these seats of tranquillity all evils fly far away; death, 
disease, poverty, pain, regret, remorse, fear, even hope, — 
which is sometimes not less painful than fear itself, — ani- 
mosity, disgust, and resentment can never enter there. 

The leaden good sense of Louis XIV. pronounced 
Fenelon the "most chimerical" man in France. 
The Founder of the kingdom of heaven would have 
been a dreamer, to this most worldly-minded of 
" Most Christian " monarchs. Bossuet, who, about 
to die, read something of Fenelon's " Telemachus," 
said it was a book hardly serious enough for a 



224 Classic French Course in English. 

clergyman to write. A more serious book, whether 
its purpose be regarded, or its undoubted actual 
influence in moulding the character of a prospective 
ruler of France, was not written by any clergyman 
of Fenelon's or Bossuet's time. 

Fenelon was an eloquent preacher as well as an 
elegant writer. His influence exerted in both the 
two functions, that of the writer and that of the 
preacher, was powerfully felt in favor of the free- 
dom of nature in style as against the convention ality r 
of culture and art. He insensibly helped on that 
reform from a too rigid classicism which in our day 
we have seen pushed to its extreme in the exaggera- 
tions of romanticism. Few wiser words have ever 
been spoken on the subject of oratory, than are to 
be found in his " Dialogues on Eloquence." 

French literature, unfortunately, is on the whole 
such in character as to need all that it can show, to 
be cast into the scale of moral elevation and purity. 
Fenelon alone is, in quantity as in quality, enough, 
not indeed to overcome, but to go far toward over- 
coming, the perverse inclination of the balance. 



Montesquieu. 225 

XIV. 

MONTESQUIEU. 
1689-1755. 

To Montesquieu belongs the glory of being the 
founder, or inventor, of the philosophy of history. 
Bossuet might dispute this palm with him ; but Bos- 
suet, in his " Discourse on Universal History," only 
exemplified the principle which it was left to Mon- 
tesquieu afterward more consciously to develop. 

Three books, still living, are associated with the 
name of Montesquieu, — "The Persian Letters," 
u The Greatness and the Decline of the Romans," 
and " The Spirit of Laws." "The Persian Let- 
ters " are a series of epistles purporting to be written 
by a Persian sojourning in Paris and observing the 
manners and morals of the people around him. The 
idea is ingenious ; though the ingenuity, we suppose, 
was not original with Montesquieu. Such letters 
afford the writer of them an admirable advantage 
for telling satire on contemporary follies. This 
production of Montesquieu became the suggestive 
example to Goldsmith for his u Citizen of the 
World; or, Letters of a Chinese Philosopher." We 
shall have here no room for illustrative citations 
from Montesquieu's "Persian Letters." 



226 Classic French Course in English. 

The second work, that on the " Greatness and 
the Decline of the Romans," is less a history than 
a series of essays on the history of Rome. It is 
brilliant, striking, suggestive. It aims to be philo- 
sophical rather than historical. It deals in bold 
generalizations. The spirit of it is, perhaps, too 
constantly and too profoundly hostile to the Ro- 
mans. Something of the ancient Gallic enmity — 
as if a derivation from that last and noblest of the 
Gauls, Vercingetorix — seems to animate the French- 
man in discussing the character and the career of 
the great conquering nation of antiquity. The crit- 
ical element is the element chiefly wanting to make 
Montesquieu's work equal to the demands of mod- 
ern historical scholarship. Montesquieu was, how- 
ever, a full worth}' forerunner of the philosophical 
historians of to-da}\ We give a single extract in 
illustration, — an extract condensed from the chap- 
ter in which the author analyzes and expounds the 
foreign policy of the Romans. The generalizations 
are bold and brilliant, — too bold, probably, for strict 
critical truth. (We use, for our extract, the recent 
translation by Mr. Jehu Baker, who enriches his 
volume with original notes of no little interest and 
value.) Montesquieu : — 

This body [the Roman Senate] erected itself into a tri- 
bunal for the judgment of all peoples, and at the end of 
every war it decided upon the punishments and the recom- 
penses which it conceived each to be entitled to. It took 
away parts of the lands of the conquered states, in order to 



Montesquieu. 227 

bestow them upon the allies of Rome, thus accomplishing 
two objects at once, — attaching to Eome those kings of 
whom she had little to fear and much to hope, and weaken- 
ing those of whom she had little to hope and all to fear. 

Allies were employed to make war upon an enemy, but 
the destroyers were at once destroyed in their turn. Philip 
was beaten with the half of the iEtolians, who were im- 
mediately afterwards annihilated for having joined them- 
selves to Antiochus. Antiochus was beaten with the help 
of the Rhodians, who, after having received signal rewards, 
were humiliated forever, under the pretext that they had 
requested that peace might be made with Perseus. 

When they had many enemies on hand at the same time, 
they accorded a truce to the weakest, which considered itself 
happy in obtaining such a respite, counting it for much to 
be able to secure a postponement of its ruin. 

When they were engaged in a great war, the senate af- 
fected to ignore all sorts of injuries, and silently awaited 
the arrival of the proper time for punishment ; when, if it 
saw that only some individuals were culpable, it refused to 
punish them, choosing rather to hold the entire nation as 
criminal, and thus reserve to itself a useful vengeance. 

As they inflicted inconceivable evils upon their enemies, 
there were not many leagues formed against them; for those 
who were most distant from danger were not willing to draw 
nearer to it. The consequence of this was, that they were 
rarely attacked ; whilst, on the other hand, they constantly 
made war at such time, in such manner, and against such 
peoples, as suited their convenience; and, among the many 
nations which they assailed, there were very few that would 
not have submitted to every species of injury at their hands 
if they had been willing to leave them in peace. 

It being their custom to speak always as masters, the am- 
bassadors whom they sent to nations which had not yet felt 
their power were certain to be insulted; and this was an 
infallible pretext for a new war. 



228 Classic French Course in English. 

As they never made peace in good faith, and as, with the 
design of "universal conquest, their treaties were, properly- 
speaking, only suspensions of war, they always put condi- 
tions in them which "began the ruin of the states which 
accepted them. They either provided that the garrisons of 
strong places should be withdrawn, or that the number of 
troops should be limited, or that the horses or the elephants 
of the vanquished party should be delivered over to them- 
selves ; and if the defeated people was powerful on sea, they 
compelled it to burn its vessels, and sometimes to remove, 
and occupy a place of habitation farther inland. 

After having destroyed the armies of a prince, they ruined 
his finances by excessive taxes, or by the imposition of a 
tribute under pretext of requiring him to pay the expenses 
of the war, — a new species of tyranny, which forced the van- 
quished sovereign to oppress his own subjects, and thus to 
alienate their affection. 

When they granted peace to a king, they took some of his 
brothers or children as hostages. This gave them the means 
of troubling his kingdom at their pleasure. If they held the 
nearest heir, they intimidated the possessor; if only a prince 
of a remote degree, they used him to stir up revolts against 
the legitimate ruler. 

Whenever any people or prince withdrew their obedience 
from their sovereign, they immediately accorded to them the 
title of allies of the Koman people, and thus rendered them 
sacred and inviolable; so that there was no king, however 
great he might be, who could for a moment be sure of his 
subjects, or even of his family. 

Although the title of Roman ally was a species of servi- 
tude, it was, nevertheless, very much sought after; for the 
possession of this title made it certain that the recipients of 
it would receive injuries from the Romans only, and there 
was ground for the hope that this class of injuries would be 
rendered less grievous than they would otherwise be. 

Thus, there was no service which nations and kings were 



Montesquieu. 229 

not ready to perform, nor any humiliation which they did 
not submit to, in order to obtain this distinction. . . . 

These customs were not merely some particular facts 
which happened at hazard. They were permanently estab- 
lished principles, as may be readily seen; for the maxims 
which the Romans acted upon against the greatest powers 
were precisely those which they had employed in the begin- 
ning of their career against the small cities which sur- 
rounded them. . . . 

But nothing served Eome more effectually than the re- 
spect which she inspired among all nations": She immedi- 
ately reduced kings to silence, and rendered them as dumb. 
With the latter, it was not a mere question of the degree of 
their power: their very persons were attacked. To risk a 
war with Rome was to expose themselves to captivity, to 
death, and to the infamy of a triumph. Thus it was that 
kings, who lived in pomp and luxury, did not dare to look 
with steady eyes upon the Eoman people, and, losing cour- 
age, they hoped, by their patience and their obsequiousness, 
to obtain some postponement of the calamities with which 
they were menaced. 

The t; Spirit of Laws " is probably to be consid- 
ered the masterpiece of Montesquieu. It is our 
duty, however, to say, that this work is quite differ- 
ent^ estimated by different authorities. By some, 
it is praised in terms of the highest admiration, as a 
great achievement in wide and wise political or ju- 
ridical philosophy. By others, it is dismissed very 
lightly, as the ambitious, or, rather, pretentious, 
effort of a superficial man, a showy mere sciolist. 
It acquired great contemporary fame, both at home 
and abroad. It was promptly translated into 
English, the translator earning the merited compli- 



230 Classic French Course in English. 

ment of the author's own hearty approval of his 
work. Horace Walpole, who was something of a 
Gallomaniac, makes repeated allusion to Montes- 
quieu's " Spirit of Laws," in letters of his written 
at about the time of the appearance of the book. 
But Walpole' s admiring allusions themselves contain 
evidence that admiration equal to his own of the 
work that he praised, was by no means universal in 
England. 

The general aspect of the book is that of a com- 
position meant to be luminously analyzed and ar- 
ranged. Divisions and titles abound. There are 
thirty-one "books" ; and each book contains, on the 
average, perhaps about the same number of chapters. 
The library edition, in English, consists of two vol- 
umes, comprising together some eight hundred open 
pages, in good-sized type. The books and chapters 
are therefore not formidably long. The look of the 
work is as if it were readable ; and its character, on 
the whole, corresponds. It would hardly be French, 
if such were not the case. Except that Montes- 
quieu's " Spirit of Laws " is, as we have indicated, 
a highly organized, even an over-organized, book, 
which, by emphasis, Montaigne's " Essays " is not, 
these two works may be said, in their contents, 
somewhat to resemble each other. Montesquieu is 
nearly as discursive as Montaigne. He wishes to 
be philosophical, but he is not above supplying his 
reader with interesting historical instances. 

We shall not do better, in giving our readers a 



Montesquieu. 231 

comprehensive idea of Montesquieu's "Spirit of 
Laws," than to begin by showing them the titles 
of a number of the books : — 

Book I. Of Laws in General. Book II. Of Laws Directly- 
Derived from the Nature of Government. Book III. Of the 
Principles of the Three Kinds of Government. Book IY. 
That the Laws of Education ought to be Kelative to the 
Principles of Government. Book V. That the Laws given 
by the Legislator ought to be Kelative to the Principle of 
Government. Book YI. Consequences of the Principles 
of Different Governments with Eespect to the Simplicity of 
Civil and Criminal Laws, the Form of Judgments, and the 
Inflicting of Punishments. Book VII. Consequences of the 
Different Principles of the Three Governments with Eespect 
to Sumptuary Laws, Luxury, and the Condition of Women. 
Book VIII. Of the Corruption of the Principles of the Three 
Governments. Book XIV. Of Laws as Kelative to the 
Nature of the Climate. 

The philosophical aim and ambition of the author 
at once appear in the inquiry which he institutes for 
the three several animating principles of the three 
several forms of government respectively distin- 
guished by him ; namely, democracy (or republican- 
ism) , monarchy, and despotism. What these three 
principles are, will be seen from the following state- 
ment : "As virtue is necessary in a republic, and 
in monarchy, honor, so fear is necessary in a despotic 
government." The meaning is, that in republics, 
virtue possessed by the citizens is the spring of 
national prosperity ; that under a monarch}', the 
desire of preferment at the hands of the sovereign 



232 Classic French Course in English. 

is what quickens men to perform services to the 
state ; that despotism thrives by fear inspired in 
the breasts of those subject to its sway. 

To illustrate the freely discursive character of the 
work, we give the whole of chapter sixteen — there 
are chapters still shorter — in Book VII. : — 

AX EXCELLENT CUSTOM OF THE SAMXLTES. 

The Samnites had a custom which in so small a republic, 
and especially in their situation, must have been productive 
of admirable effects. The young people were all convened 
in one place, and their conduct was examined. He that 
was declared the best of the whole assembly, had leave given 
him to take which girl he pleased for his wife ; the second 
best chose after him, and so on. Admirable institution! 
The only recommendation that young men could have on 
this occasion, was their virtue, and the service done their 
country. He who had the greatest share of these endow- 
ments, chose which girl he liked out of the whole nation. 
Love, beauty, chastity, virtue, birth, and even wealth itself, 
were all, in some measure, the dowry of virtue. A nobler 
and grander recompense, less chargeable to a petty state, 
and more capable of influencing both sexes, could scarce be 
imagined. 

The Samnites were descended from the Lacedaemonians; 
and Plato, whose institutes are only an improvement of 
those of Lycurgus, enacted nearly the same law. 

The relation of the foregoing chapter to the sub- 
ject indicated in the title of the book, is sufficiently 
obscure and remote, for a work like this purporting 
to be philosophical. What relation exists, seems to 
be found in the fact that the Samnite custom 



Montesquieu. 233 

described tends to produce that popular virtue by 
which republics flourish. But the information, at 
all events, is curious and interesting. 

The following paragraphs, taken from the second 
chapter of Book XI Y. , contain in germ nearly the 
whole of the philosophy underlying M. Taine's 
essays on the history of literature : — 

OF THE DIFFERENCE OF MEN IN DIFFERENT CLIMATES. 

A cold air constringes the extremities of the external 
fibres of the body; this increases their elasticity, and favors 
the return of the blood from the extreme parts to the heart. 
It contracts those very fibres ; consequently it increases also 
their force. On the contrary, a warm air relaxes and 
lengthens the extremes of the fibres; of course it diminishes 
their force and elasticity. 

People are therefore more vigorous in cold climates. Here 
the action of the heart and the reaction of the extremities 
of the fibres are better performed, the temperature of the 
humors is greater, the blood moves freer towards the heart, 
and reciprocally the heart has more power. This superiority 
of strength must produce various effects; for instance, a 
greater boldness, — that is, more courage ; a greater sense of 
superiority, — that is, less desire of revenge ; a greater opinion 
of security, — that is, more frankness, less suspicion, policy 
and cunning. In short, this must be productive of very 
different tempers. Put a man into a close, warm place, and, 
for the reasons above given, he will feel a great faintness. 
If under this circumstance you propose a bold enterprise to 
him, I believe you will find him very little disposed towards 
it; his present weakness will throw him into a despondency; 
he will be afraid of every thing, being in a state of total in- 
capacity. The inhabitants of w r arm countries are, like old 
men, timorous; the people in cold countries are, like young 
men, brave. 



234 Classic French Course in English. 

In the following extract, from chapter five, Book 
XXIV., the climatic theory is again applied, this 
time to the matter of religion, in a style that makes 
one think of Buckle's " History of Civilization : "— 

When the Christian religion, two centuries ago, became 
unhappily divided into Catholic and Protestant, the people 
of the north embraced the Protestant, and those south ad- 
hered still to the Catholic. 

The reason is plain : the people of the north have, and 
will forever have, a spirit of liberty and independence, which 
the people of the south have not ; and therefore, a religion 
which has no visible head, is more agreeable to the inde- 
pendency of the climate, than that which has one. 

Climate is a "great matter" with Montesquieu. 
In treating of the subject of a state changing its 
religion, he says : — 

The ancient religion is connected with the constitution of 
the kingdom, and the new one is not; the former agrees 
with the climate, and very often the new one is opposite 
to it. 

For the Christian religion, Montesquieu professes 
profound respect, — rather as a pagan political phi- 
losopher might do, than as one intimately acquainted 
with it by a personal experience of his own. His 
spirit, however, is humane and liberal. It is the 
spirit of Montaigne, it is the spirit of Voltaire, 
speaking in the idiom of this different man, and of 
this different man as influenced by his different cir- 
cumstances. Montesquieu had had practical proof 



Montesquieu. 235 

of the importance to himself of not offending the 
dominant hierarchy. 

The latter part of "The Spirit of Laws " contains 
discussions exhibiting no little research on the part 
of the author. There is, for one example, a discus- 
sion of the course of commerce in different ages of 
the world, and of the influences that have wrought 
from time to time to bring about the changes occur- 
ring. For another example, there is a discussion 
of the feudal system. 

Montesquieu was an admirer of the English con- 
stitution. His work, perhaps, contains no extended 
chapters more likely to instruct the general reader 
and to furnish a good idea of the writer's genius and 
method, than the two chapters — chapter six, Book 
XI., and chapter twenty-seven, Book XIX. — in 
which the English nation and the English form of 
government are sympathetically described. We sim- 
ply indicate, for we have no room to exhibit, these 
chapters. Voltaire, too, expressed Montesquieu's 
admiration of English liberty and English law. 

On the whole, concerning Montesquieu it may 
justly be said, that of all political philosophers, he, 
if not the profoundest, is at least one of the most 
interesting ; if not the most accurate and critical, at 
least one of the most brilliant and suo^estive. 

As to Montesquieu the man, it is perhaps suffi- 
cient to say that he seems to have been a very good 
type of the French gentleman of qualit}\ An in- 
teresting story told by Sainte-Beuve reveals, if true, 



236 Classic French Course in English. 

a side at once attractive and repellent of his per- 
sonal character. Montesquieu at Marseilles em- 
ployed a young boatman, whose manner and speech 
indicated more cultivation than was to have been 
looked for in one plying his vocation. The phi- 
losopher learned his history. The youth's father 
was at the time a captive in one of the Barbary 
States, and this son of his was now working to earn 
money for his ransom. The stranger listened ap- 
parently unmoved, and went his wa} T . Some months 
later, home came the father, released he knew not 
how, to his surprised and overjoyed family. The 
son guessed the secret, and, meeting Montesquieu 
a year or so after in Marseilles, threw himself in 
grateful tears at his feet, begged the generous bene- 
factor to reveal his name and to come and see the 
family he had blessed. Montesquieu, calmly ex- 
pressing himself ignorant of the whole business, 
actually shook the young fellow off, and turned 
away without betraying the least emotion. It was 
not till after the cold-blooded philanthropist's death 
that the fact came out. 

A tranquil, happy temperament was Montes- 
quieu's. He would seem to have come as near as 
any one ever did to being the natural master of his 
part in life. But the world was too much for him, 
as it is for all — at last. Witness the contrast of 
these two different sets of expressions from his pen. 
In earlier manhood he says : — 






Montesquieu. 237 

Study has been for me the sovereign remedy for all the 
dissatisfactions of life, having never had a sense of chagrin 
that an hour's reading would not dissipate. I wake in the 
morning with a secret joy to behold the light. I behold 
the light with a kind of ravishment, and all the rest of the 
day I am happy. 

Within a few years of his death, the brave, cheer- 
ful tone had declined to this : — 

I am broken down with fatigue; I must repose for the 
rest of my life. 

Then further to this : — 

I have expected to kill myself for the last three months, 
finishing an addition to my work on the origin and changes 
of the French civil law. It will take only three hours to 
read it; but, I assure you, it has been such a labor to me, 
that my hair has turned white under it all. 

Finally it touches nadir : — 

It [his work] has almost cost me my life; I must rest; I 
can work no more. 

My candles are all burned out ; I have set off all my car- 
tridges. 

When Montesquieu died, only Diderot, among 
Parisian men of letters, followed him to his tomb. 



238 Classic French Course in English. 



XV. 

VOLTAIRE. 

1694-1778. 

By the volume and the variety, joined to the un- 
failing brilliancy, of his production ; by his prodigious 
effectiveness ; and by his universal fame, — Voltaire 
is undoubtedly entitled to rank first, with no fellow, 
among the eighteenth-century literary men, not 
merely of France, but of the world. He was not a 
great man, — he produced no single great work, — 
but he must nevertheless be pronounced a. great 
writer. There is hardly any species of composition 
to which, in the long course of his activity, he did 
not turn his talent. It cannot be said that he suc- 
ceeded splendidly in all ; but in some he succeeded 
splendidly, and he failed abjectly in none. There 
is not a great thought, and there is not a flat expres- 
sion, in the whole bulk of his multitudinous and 
multifarious works. Read him wherever you will, 
in the ninety-seven volumes (equivalent, probably, 
in the aggregate, to three hundred volumes like the 
present) which, in one leading edition, collect his pro- 
ductions, — you may often find him superficial, you 
may often find him untrustworthy, you will certainly 
often find him flippant, but not less certainly you 



Voltaire. 239 

will never find him obscure, and you will never find 
him dull. The clearness, the vivacity, of this man's 
mind were something almost preternatural. So, too, 
were his readiness, his versatility, his audacity. He 
had no distrust of himself, no awe of his fellow- 
men, no reverence for God, to deter him from any 
attempt with his pen, however presuming. If a 
state ode were required, it should be ready to order 
at twelve to-morrow ; if an epic poem — to be classed 
with the " Iliad' ' and the "JEneid " — the "Henri- 
acle " was promptly forthcoming, to answer the de- 
mand. He did not shrink from flouting a national 
idol, by freely finding fault with Corneille ; and he 
lightly undertook to extinguish a venerable form of 
Christianity, simply with pricks, innumerably re- 
peated, of his tormenting pen. 

A very large part of the volume of Voltaire's 
production consists of letters, written by him to cor- 
respondents perhaps more numerous, and more vari- 
ous in rank, from kings on the throne down to 
scribblers in the garret, than ever, in any other case, 
exchanged such communications with a literary man. 
Another considerable proportion of his work in lit- 
erature took the form of pamphlets, either anony- 
mously or pseudonymously published, in which this 
master-spirit of intellectual disturbance and ferment 
found it convenient, or advantageous, or safe, to 
promulge and propagate his ideas. A shower of 
such publications was incessantly escaping from Vol- 
taire's pen. More formal and regular, more con- 



240 Classic French Course in English. 

fessedly ambitious, literary essays of his, were poems 
in every kind, — heroic, mock-heroic, lyric, elegiac, 
comic, tragic, satiric, — historical and biographical 
monographs, and tales or novels of a peculiar class. 
Voltaire's poetry does not count for very much 
now. Still, its first success was so great that it will 
always remain an important topic in literary history. 
Besides this, it really is, in some of its kinds, 
remarkable work. Voltaire's epic verse is almost 
an exception, needful to be made, from our assertion 
that this author is nowhere dull. " The Henriade" 
comes dangerously near that mark. It is a tasteless 
reproduction of Lucan's faults, with little repro- 
duction of Lucan's virtues. Voltaire's comedies 
are bright and witty, but they are not laughter-pro- 
voking ; and they do not possess the elemental and 
creative character of Shakspeare's or Moliere's 
work. His tragedies are better ; but they do not 
avoid that cast of mechanical which seems neces- 
sarily to belong to poetry produced by talent, 
however consummate, unaccompanied with genius. 
Voltaire's histories are luminous and readable nar- 
ratives, but they cannot claim either the merit of 
critical accuracy or of philosophic breadth and 
insight. His letters would have to be read in con- 
siderable volume in order to furnish a full satis- 
factory idea of the author. His tales, finally, afford 
the most available, and, on the whole, likewise, the 
best, means of coming shortly and easily at a knowl- 
edge of Voltaire. 



Voltaire. 241 

Among Voltaire's tales, doubtless the one most 
eligible for use, to serve our present purpose, is his 
" Candide." This is a nondescript piece of fiction, 
the design of which is, by means of a narrative of 
travel and adventure, constructed without much 
regard to the probability of particular incidents, to 
set forth, in the characteristic mocking vein of Vol- 
taire, the vanity and misery of mankind. The 
author's invention is often whimsical enough ; but it 
is constantly so ready ] so reckless, and so abundant, 
that the reader never tires, as he is hurried ceaselessly 
forward from change to change of scene and cir- 
cumstance. The play of wit is incessant. The 
style is limpidity itself. Your sympathies are never 
painfully engaged, even in recitals of experience 
that ought to be the most heart-rending. There is 
never a touch of noble moral sentiment, to relieve 
the monotony of mockery that lightly laughs at you, 
and tantalizes you, page after page, from the begin- 
ning to the end of the book. The banter is not 
good-natured ; though, on the other hand, it cannot 
justly be pronounced ill-natured ; and it is, in final 
effect upon the reader's mind, bewildering and de- 
pressing in the extreme. Vanity of vanities, all is 
vanity, — such is the comfortless doctrine of the 
book. The apples are the apples of Sodom, every- 
where in the world. There is no virtue anywhere, 
no good, no happiness. Life is a cheat, the love of 
life is a cruelty, and beyond life there is nothing. 
At least, there is no glimpse given of any compen- 



242 Classic French Course in English. 

sating future reserved for men, a future to redress 
the balance of good and ill experienced here and 
now. Faith and hope, those two eyes Of the soul, 
are smilingly quenched in their sockets ; and you 
are left blind, in a whirling world of darkness, with 
a whirling world of darkness before you. 

Such is u Candide." We select a single passage 
for specimen. The passage we select is more nearly 
free than almost any other passage as long, in this 
extraordinary romance, would probably be found, 
from impure implications. It is, besides, more 
nearly serious in apparent motive, than is the gen- 
eral tenor of the production. Here, however, as 
elsewhere, the writer keeps carefully down his 
mocking-mask. At least, you are left tantalizingly 
uncertain all the time how much the grin you face 
is the grin of the man, and how much the grin of a 
visor that he wears. 

Candide, the hero, is a young fellow of ingenuous 
character, brought successively under the lead of 
several different persons wise in the ways of the 
world, who act toward him, each in his turn, the 
part of "guide, philosopher, and friend." Can- 
elide, with such a mentor bearing the name Martin, 
has now arrived at Venice. Candide speaks : — 

" I have heard great talk of the Senator Pococurante, who 
lives in that fine house at the Brenta, where they say he 
entertains foreigners in the most polite manner. They pre- 
tend this man is a perfect stranger to uneasiness." — "I 
should be glad to see so extraordinary a being," said Martin. 



Voltaire. 243 

Candide thereupon sent a messenger to Signor Pococurante*, 
desiring permission to wait on him the next day. 

Candide and his friend Martin went into a gondola on the 
Brenta, and arrived at the palace of the noble Pococurante: 
the gardens were laid out in elegant taste, and adorned with 
fine marble statues; his palace was built after the most 
approved rules of architecture. The master of the house, 
who was a man of sixty, and very rich, received our two 
travellers with great politeness, but without much ceremony, 
which somewhat disconcerted Candide, but was not at all 
displeasing to Martin. 

As soon as they were seated, two very pretty girls, neatly 
dressed, brought in chocolate, which was extremely well 
frothed. Candide could not help making encomiums upon 
their beauty and graceful carriage. " The creatures are 
well enough," said the senator. "I make them my com- 
panions, for I am heartily tired of the ladies of the town, 
their coquetry, their jealousy, their quarrels, their humors, 
their meannesses, their pride, and their folly. I am weary 
of making sonnets, or of paying for sonnets to be made, on 
them; but, after all, these two girls begin to grow very 
indifferent to me." 

After having refreshed himself, Candide walked into a 
large gallery, where he was struck with the sight of a fine 
collection of paintings. " Pray," said Candide, " by what 
master are the two first of these ? " — " They are Kaphael's," 
answered the senator. " I gave a great deal of money for 
them seven years ago, purely out of curiosity, as they were 
said to be the finest pieces in Italy: but I cannot say they 
please me ; the coloring is dark and heavy ; the figures do not 
swell nor come out enough; and the drapery is very bad. 
In short, notwithstanding the encomiums lavished upon 
them, they are not, in my opinion, a true representation of 
nature. I approve of no paintings but where I think I be- 
hold Nature herself; and there are very few, if any, of that 
kind to be met with. I have what is called a fine collection, 
but I take no manner of delight in them." 



244 Classic French Course in English. 

While dinner was getting ready, Pococurante ordered a 
concert. Candide praised the music to the skies. "This 
noise," said the noble Venetian, "may amuse one for a 
little time ; but if it was to last above half an hour, it would 
grow tiresome to everybody, though perhaps no one would 
care to own it. Music is become the art of executing what 
is difficult; now, whatever is difficult cannot be long 
pleasing. 

i ' I believe I might take more pleasure in an opera, if 
they had not made such a monster of that species of dra- 
matic entertainment as perfectly shocks me; and I am 
amazed how people can bear to see wretched tragedies set 
to music, where the scenes are contrived for no other pur- 
pose than to lug in, as it were by the ears, three or four 
ridiculous songs, to give a favorite actress an opportunity of 
exhibiting her pipe. Let who will or can die away in rap- 
tures at the trills of a eunuch quavering the majestic part 
of Csesar or Cato, and strutting in a foolish manner upon 
tbe stage. For my part, I have long ago renounced these 
paltry entertainments, which constitute the glory of modern 
Italy, and are so dearly purchased by crowned heads." 
Candide opposed these sentiments, but he did it in a dis- 
creet manner. As for Martin, he was entirely of the old 
senator's opinion. 

Dinner being served up, they sat down to table, and after a 
very hearty repast, returned to the library. Candide, observ- 
ing Homer richly bound, commended the noble Venetian's 
taste. " This," said he," is a book that was once the delight 
of the great Pangloss, the best philosopher in Germany." 
— " Homer is no favorite of mine," answered Pococurante 
very coolly. "I was made to believe once that I took a 
pleasure in reading him; but his continual repetitions of 
battles must have all such a resemblance with each other; 
his gods that are forever in a hurry and bustle, without ever 
doing any thing; his Helen, that is the cause of the war, 
and yet hardly acts in the whole performance; his Troy, 



Voltaire. 245 

that holds out so long without being taken; in short, all 
these things together make the poem very insipid to me. I 
have asked some learned men whether they are not in reality 
as much tired as myself with reading this poet. Those who 
spoke ingenuously assured me that he had made them fall 
asleep, and yet that they could not well avoid giving him a 
place in their libraries; but that it was merely as they would 
do an antique, or those rusty medals which are kept only 
for curiosity, and are of no manner of use in commerce.*' 

"But your excellency does not surely form the same 
opinion of Virgil?'' said Candide. ''Why, I grant," re- 
plied Pococurante, " that the second, third, fourth, and sixth 
books of his 'JEneid' are excellent; but as for his pious 
iEneas, his strong Cloanthus, his friendly Achates, his boy 
Ascanius, his silly King Latinus, his ill-bred Amata, his 
insipid Lavinia, and some other characters much in the 
same strain, I think there cannot in nature be any thing 
more flat and disagreeable. I must confess I prefer Tasso 
far beyond him; nay, even that sleepy tale-teller Ariosto." 

" ATay I take the liberty to ask if you do not receive great 
pleasure from reading Horace?" said. Candide. "There 
are maxims in this writer," replied Pococurante, '"'from 
whence a man of the world may reap some benefit : and the 
short measure of the verse makes them more easily to be 
retained in the memory. But I see nothing extraordinary 
in his journey to Brundusium, and his account of his bad 
dinner; nor in his dirty, low quarrel between one Rupilius, 
whose words, as he expresses it, were full of poisonous filth; 
and another, whose language was dipped in vinegar. His 
indelicate verses against old women and witches have fre- 
quently given me great offence : nor can I discover the great 
merit of his telling his friend ^Maecenas, that, if he will but 
rank him in the class of lyric poets, his lofty head shall 
touch the stars. Ignorant readers are apt to advance every 
thing by the lump in a writer of reputation. For my part, 
I read only to please myself. I like nothing but what makes 



246 Classic French Course in English. 

for my purpose." Candida, who had been brought up with 
a notion of never making use of his own judgment, was 
astonished at what he heard ; but Martin found there was a 
good deal of reason in the senator's remarks. 

" Oh, here is a Tully!" said Candide; " this great man, I 
fancy, you are never tired of reading." — " Indeed, I never 
read him at all," replied Pococurante. " What a deuce is 
it to me whether he pleads for Kabirius or Cluentius ? I try 
causes enough myself. I had once some liking to his philo- 
sophical works; but when I found he doubted of every 
thing, I thought I knew as much as himself, and had no 
need of a guide to learn ignorance." 

" Ha! " cried Martin, "here are fourscore volumes of the 
' Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences ; ' perhaps there may 
be something curious and valuable in this collection." — 
" Yes," answered Pococurante; " so there might, if any one 
of these compilers of this rubbish had only invented the art 
of pin-making. But all these volumes are filled with mere 
chimerical systems, without one single article conducive to 
real utility." 

" I see a prodigious number of plays," said Candide, " in 
Italian, Spanish, and French." — " Yes," replied the Vene- 
tian; "there are, I think, three thousand, and not three 
dozen of them good for any thing. As to those huge vol- 
umes of divinity, and those enormous collections of sermons, 
they are not all together worth one single page of Seneca; 
and I fancy you will readily believe that neither myself nor 
any one else ever looks into them." 

Martin, perceiving some shelves filled with English books, 
said to the senator, "I fancy that a republican must be 
highly delighted with those books, which are most of them 
written with a noble spirit of freedom." — "It is noble to 
write as we think," said Pococurante; "it is the privilege 
of humanity. Throughout Italy we write only what we do 
not think; and the present inhabitants of the country of 
the Caesars and Antoninuses dare not acquire a single idea 



Voltaire. 247 

without the permission of a father Dominican. I should 
be enamoured of the spirit of the English nation did it not 
utterly frustrate the good effects it would produce by pas- 
sion and the spirit of party." 

Candide, seeing a Milton, asked the senator if he did not 
think that author a great man. " Who ! " said Pococurante 
sharply. "That barbarian, who writes a tedious commen- 
tary, in ten books of rambling verse, on the first chapter of 
Genesis! That slovenly imitator of the Greeks, who dis- 
figures the creation by making the Messiah take a pair of 
compasses from heaven's armory to plan the world; whereas 
Moses represented the Deity as producing the whole uni- 
verse by his fiat ! Can I think you have any esteem for a 
writer who has spoiled Tasso's hell and the devil; who 
transforms Lucifer, sometimes into a toad, and at others 
into a pygmy ; who makes him say the same thing over again 
a hundred times; who metamorphoses him into a school- 
divine; and who, by an absurdly serious imitation of 
Ariosto's comic invention of fire-arms, represents the devils 
and angels cannonading each other in heaven ! Neither I, 
nor any other Italian, can possibly take pleasure in such 
melancholy reveries. But the marriage of Sin and Death, 
and snakes issuing from the womb of the former, are enough 
to make any person sick that is not lost to all sense of deli- 
cacy. This obscene, whimsical, and disagreeable poem met 
with the neglect that it deserved at its first publication; and 
I only £reat the author now as he was treated in his own 
country by his contemporaries." 

Candide was sensibly grieved at this speech, as he had a 
great respect for Homer, and w T as very fond of Milton. 
"Alas!" said he softly to Martin, "I am afraid this man 
holds our German poets in great contempt." — "There 
would be no such great harm in that," said Martin. — " Oh, 
what a surprising man!" said Candide to himself. " What 
a prodigious genius is this Pococurante ! Nothing can please 
him." 



248 Classic French Course in English. 

After finishing their survey of the library they went down 
into the garden, when Candide commended the several beau- 
ties that offered themselves to his view. l ' I know nothing 
upon earth laid out in such bad taste," said Pococurante; 
* ' every thing about it is childish and trifling ; but I shall 
have another laid out to-morrow upon a nobler plan." 

As soon as our two travellers had taken leave of his excel- 
lency, "Well," said Candide to Martin, "I hope you will 
own that this man is the happiest of all mortals, for he is 
above every thing he possesses." — " But do you not see," 
answered Martin, "that he likewise dislikes every thing he 
possesses ? It was an observation of Plato long since, that 
those are not the best stomachs that reject, without distinc- 
tion, all sorts of aliments." — " True," said Candide; " but 
still, there must certainly be a pleasure in criticising every 
thing, and in perceiving faults where others think they see 
beauties." — " That is," replied Martin, " there is a pleasure 
in having no pleasure." — " Well, well," said Candide, "I 
find that I shall be the only happy man at last, when I am 
blessed with the sight of my dear Cunegund." — " It is good 
to hope," said Martin. 

The single citation preceding sufficiently exempli- 
fies, at their best, though at their worst, not, the style 
and the spirit of Voltaire's " Candide;" as his 
"Candide" sufficiently exemplifies the style and 
the spirit of the most characteristic of Voftaire's 
writings in general. u Pococurantism " is a word, 
now not uncommon in English, contributed by Vol- 
taire to the vocabulary of literature. To readers of 
the foregoing extract, the sense of the term will not 
need to be explained. We respectfully suggest to 
our dictionary-makers, that the fact stated of its 
origin in the "Candide" of Voltaire would be in- 



Voltaire. 249 

tercsting and instructive to man} r . Voltaire coined 
the name, to suit the character of his Venetian gen- 
tleman, from two Italian words which mean together 
" little-caring." Signor Pococurante is the immor- 
tal type of men that have worn out their capacity 
of fresh sensation and enjoyment. 

It was a happy editorial thought of Mr. Henry 
Morley, in his cheap library, now issuing, of standard 
books for the people, to bind up Johnson's " Ras- 
selas " in one volume with Voltaire's " Candide." 
The two stories, nearly contemporaneous in their 
production, offer a stimulating contrast in treatment, 
at the hands of two sharply contrasted writers, of 
much the same subject, — the unsatisfactoriness of 
the world. 

Mr. John Morley, a very different writer and a 
very different man from his namesake just men- 
tioned, has an elaborate monograph on Voltaire in 
a volume perhaps twice as large as the present. 
This work claims the attention of all students 
desirous of exhaustive acquaintance with its sub- 
ject. Mr. John Morley writes in sympathy with 
Voltaire, so far as Voltaire was an enemy of the 
Christian religion ; but in antipathy to him, so far 
as Voltaire fell short of being an atheist. A simi- 
lar sympathy, limited by a similar antipathy, is 
observable in the same author's still more extended 
monograph on Rousseau. It is only in his two 
volumes on " Diderot and the Encyclopaedists," that 
Mr. Morley finds himself able to w r rite without 



250 Classic French Course in English. 

reserve in full moral accord with the men whom he 
describes. Of course, in all these books the biog- 
rapher and critic feels, as Englishman, obliged to 
concede much to his English audience, in the way 
of condemning impurities in his authors. The con- 
cession thus made is made with great adroitness of 
manner, the writer's aim evidently being to imply 
that his infidels and atheists, if they are somewhat 
vicious in taste, had the countenance of good Chris- 
tian example or parallel for all the lapses they show. 
Mr. Morley wishes to be fair, but his atheist zeal 
overcomes him. This is especially evident in his 
work on " Diderot and the Encyclopaedists," where 
his propagandist desire to clear the character of his 
hero bribes him once and again to unconscious false 
dealing. In his " Voltaire," and in his " Rous- 
seau," Mr. Morley is so lofty in tone, expressing 
himself against the moral obliquities of the men 
with whom he is dealing, that often you feel the 
ethic atmosphere of the books to be pure and bracing, 
almost beyond the standard of biblical and Chris- 
tian. But in his " Diderot and the Encyclopaedists," 
such fine severity is conspicuously absent. Mr. 
Morley is so deeply convinced that atheism is what 
we all most need just now, that when he has — not 
halting mere infidels, like Voltaire and Rousseau — 
but good thorough-going atheists, like Diderot and 
his fellows, to exhibit, he can hardly bring himself 
to injure their exemplary influence with his readers, 
by allowing to exist any damaging flaws in their 
character. 



Voltaire. 251 

Even in Voltaire and Rousseau, but particularly 
in Voltaire, Mr. Morley, though his sympathy with 
these writers is, as we have said, not complete, finds 
far more to praise than to blame. To this eager 
apostle of atheism, Voltaire was at least on the right 
road, although he did, unfortunately, stop short of 
the goal. His influence was potent against Chris- 
tianity, and potent it certainly was not against 
atheism. Voltaire might freely be lauded as on 
the whole a mighty and a beneficent liberalizer of 
thought. 

And we, we who are neither atheists nor deists — 
let us not deny to Voltaire his just meed of praise. 
There were streaks of gold in the base alloy of that 
character of his. He burned with magnanimous 
heat against the hideous doctrine and practice of 
ecclesiastical persecution. Carlyle says of Voltaire, 
that he " spent his best efforts, and as many still 
think, successfully, in assaulting the Christian re- 
ligion." This, true though it be, is liable to be 
falsely understood. It was not against the Chris- 
tian religion, as the Christian religion really is, but 
rather against the Christian religion as the Roman 
hierarchy misrepresented it, that Voltaire ostensi- 
bly directed his efforts. "You are right," wrote 
he to his henchman D'Alembert, in 1762, u in assum- 
ing that I speak of superstition only ; for as to the 
Christian religion, I respect it and love it, as you 
do." This distinction of Voltaire's, with whatever 
degree of simple sincerity on his part made, ought 



252 Classic French Course in English. 

to be remembered in his favor, when his memorable 
motto, " Ecrasez VInfdme" is interpreted and ap- 
plied. He did not mean Jesus Christ by V Infdme ; 
he did not mean the Christian religion by it ; he did 
not even mean the Christian Church by it ; he meant 
the oppressive despotism and the crass obscurantism 
of the Roman-Catholic hierarchy. At least, this is 
what he would have said that he meant, what in 
fact he substantially did say that he meant, when in- 
cessantly reiterating, in its various forms, his watch- 
word, "Ecrasez VInfdme" "Ecrasons V Infdme," — 
" Crush the wretch ! " " Let us crush the wretch ! " 
His blows were aimed, perhaps, at " superstition ; " 
but they really fell, in the full half of their effect, 
on Christianity itself. Whether Voltaire regretted 
this, whether he would in his heart have had it 
otherwise, may well, in spite of any protestation 
from him of love for Christianity, be doubted. Still, 
it is never, in judgment of Voltaire, to be forgotten 
that the organized Christianity which he confronted, 
was in large part a system justly hateful to the true 
and wise lover whether of God or of man. That 
system he did well in fighting. Carnal indeed were 
the weapons with which he fought it ; and his victory 
over it was a carnal victory, bringing, on the whole, 
but slender net advantage, if any such advantage 
at all, to the cause of final truth and light. The 
French Revolution, with its excesses and its hor- 
rors, was perhaps the proper, the legitimate, the 
necessary, fruit of resistance such as was Voltaire's, 



Voltaire. 253 

in fundamental spirit, to the evils in church and in 
state against which he conducted so gallantly his 
life-long campaign. 

But though we thus bring in doubt the work of 
Voltaire, both as to the purity of its motive, and as 
to the value of its fruit, we should wrong our sense 
of justice to ourselves if we permitted our readers 
to suppose us blind to the generous things that this 
arch-infidel did on behalf of the suffering and the 
oppressed. Voltaire more than once wielded that 
pen of his, the most dreaded weapon in Europe, like 
a knight sworn to take on himself the championship 
of the forlorn est of causes. There is the historic 
case of Jean Calas at Toulouse, Protestant, an old 
man of near seventy, broken on the wheel, as sus- 
pected, without evidence, and against accumulated 
impossibilities, of murdering his own son, a young 
man of about thirty, by hanging him. Voltaire 
took up the case, and pleaded it to the common 
sense, and to the human feeling, of France, with 
immense effectiveness. It is, in truth, Voltaire's 
advocacy of righteousness, in this instance of in- 
credible wrong, that has made the instance itself 
immortal. His part in the case of Calas, though 
the most signal, is not the only, example of Vol- 
taire's literary knighthood. He hated oppression, 
and he loved liberty, for himself and for all men, 
with a passion as deep and as constant as any pas- 
sion of which nature had made Voltaire capable. If 
the liberty that he loved was fundamentally liberty 



254 Classic French Course in English 

as against God no less than as against men, and if 
the oppression that he hated was fundamental!} 7 the 
oppression of being put under obligation to obey 
Christ as lord of life and of thought, this was some- 
thing of which, probably, Voltaire never clearly 
thought. 

We have now indicated what was most admirable 
in Voltaire's personal character. On the whole, he 
was far from being an admirable man. He was 
vain, he was shallow, he was frivolous, he was de- 
ceitful, he was voluptuous, he fawned on the great, 
he abased himself before them, he licked the dust 
on which they stood. u Trajan, est-il content?" 
( u Is Trajan satisfied? ") — this, asked, in nauseous 
adulation, and nauseous self-abasement, by Vol- 
taire of Louis XV., so little like Trajan in charac- 
ter — is monumental. The occasion was the produc- 
tion of a piece of Voltaire's written at the instance 
of Louis XV. 's mistress, the infamous Madame de 
Pompadour. The king, for answer, simply gorgon- 
ized the poet with a stony Bourbon stare. 

But, taken altogether, Voltaire's life was a great 
success. He got on in the world, was rich, was 
fortunate, was famous, was ga} T , if he was not 
happy. He had his friendship with the great 
Frederick of Prussia, who filled for his false French 
flatterer a return cup of sweetness, cunningly mixed 
with exceeding bitterness. His death was an appro- 
priate coup de thedtre, a felicity of finish to such a 
life, quite beyond the reach of art. He came back 



Rousseau. 255 

to Paris, whence he had been an exile, welcomed 
with a triumph transcending the triumph of a con- 
queror. They made a great feast for him, a feast 
of flattery, in the theatre. The old man was drunk 
with delight. The delight was too much for him. 
It literally killed him. It was as if a favorite 
actress should be quite smothered to death on the 
stage, under flowers thrown in excessive profusion 
at her feet. 

Let Carlyle's sentence be our epigraph on Vol- 
taire : — 

"No great Man. . . . Found alwaj^s at the top, 
less by power in swimming than by lightness in 
floating." 



XVI. 

ROUSSEAU. 
1712-1778. 



There are two Rousseaus in French literature. 
At least, there was a first, until the second effaced 
him, and became the only. 

We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyper- 
bolically. J. B. Rousseau is still named as a lyric 
poet of the time of Louis XIV. But when Rous- 
seau, without initials, is spoken of, it is always 
Jean Jacques Rousseau that is meant. 



256 Classic French Course in English. 

Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most 
squalid, as it certainly is one of the roost splendid, 
among French literary names. The squalor belongs 
chiefly to the man, but the splendor is wholly the 
writer's. There is hardly another example in the 
world's literature of a union so striking of these 
opposites. 

Rousseau's life he has himself told, in the best, 
the worst, and the most imperishable, of his books, 
the " Confessions." This book is one to which the 
adjective charming attaches, in a peculiarly literal 
sense of the word. The spell, however, is repellent 
as well as attractive. But the attraction of the style 
asserts and pronounces itself only the more, in 
triumph over the much there is in the matter to dis- 
gust and revolt. It is quite the most offensive, and 
it is well-nigh the most fascinating, book that we 
know. 

The 4 ' Confessions ' ' begin as follows : — 

I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, 
and whose execution never will have an imitator. I would 
exhibit to my fellows a man in all the truth of nature, and 
that man — myself. 

Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am ac- 
quainted with men. I am made unlike any one I have ever 
seen, — I dare believe unlike any living being. If no better 
than, I am at least different from, others. Whether nature 
did well or ill in breaking the mould wherein I was cast, can 
be determined only after having read me. 

Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with 
this book in my hand, and present myself before the Sover- 



Rousseau. 257 

eign Judge. I will boldly proclaim: Thus have I acted, 
thus have I thought, such was I. With equal frankness 
have I disclosed the good and the evil. I have omitted 
nothing bad, added nothing good ; and if I have happened 
to make use of some unimportant ornament, it has, in every 
case, been simply for the purpose of filling up a void oc- 
casioned by my lack of memory. I may have taken for 
granted as true what I knew to be possible, never what I 
knew to be false. Such as I was, I have exhibited myself, — 
despicable and vile, when so; virtuous, generous, sublime, 
when so. I have unveiled my interior being, such as Thou, 
Eternal Existence, hast beheld it. Assemble around me the 
numberless throng of my fellow-mortals ; let them listen to 
my confessions, let them blush at my depravities, let them 
shrink appalled at my miseries. Let each of them, in his 
turn, with equal sincerity, lay bare his heart at the foot of 
thy throne, and then let a single one tell thee, if he dare, 
I was better than that man. 

Notwithstanding our autobiographer's disavowal 
of debt to example for the idea of his " Confes- 
sions," it seems clear that Montaigne here was at 
least inspiration, if not pattern, to Roussean. But 
Rousseau resolved to do what Montaigne had done, 
more ingenuously and more courageously than Mon- 
taigne had done it. This writer will make himself 
his subject, and then treat his subject with greater 
frankness than any man before him ever used about 
himself, or than any man after him would ever use. 
He undoubtedly succeeded in his attempt. His 
frankness, in fact, is so forward and eager, that it is 
probably even inventive of things disgraceful to him- 
self. Montaigne makes great pretence of telling his 



258 Classic French Course in English. 

own faults, but you observe that he generally chooses 
rather amiable faults of his own to tell. Rousseau's 
morbid vulgarity leads him to disclose traits in 
himself, of character or of behavior, that, despite 
whatever contrary wishes on your part, compel your 
contempt of the man. And it is for the man w r ho 
confesses, almost more than for the man who is 
guilty, that you feel the contempt. 
The " Confessions " proceed : — 

I was born at Geneva, in 1712, of Isaac Rousseau and 
Susannah Bernard, citizens. ... I came into the world 
weak and sickly. I cost my mother her life, and my birth 
was the first of my misfortunes. 

I never learned how my father supported his loss, but I 
know that he remained ever after inconsolable. . . . When 
he used to say to me, " Jean Jacques, let us speak of your 
mother," my usual reply w r as, " Well, father, we'll cry, 
then," a reply which would instantly bring the tears to his 
eyes. "Ah!" he would exclaim with agitation, "give me 
her back, console me for her loss, fill up the void she has left 
in my soul. Could I love thee thus wert thou but my son? " 
Forty years after having lost her he expired in the arms of 
a second wife, but with the name of the first on his lips, 
and her image engraven on his heart. 

Such were the authors of my being. Of all the gifts 
Heaven had allotted them, a feeling heart was the only one 
I had inherited. While, however, this had been the source 
of their happiness, it became the spring of all my misfor- 
tunes. 

" A feeling heart ! " That "expression tells the 
literary secret of Rousseau. It is hardly too much 
to say that Rousseau was the first French writer to 



Rousseau. 259 

write with his heart ; but heart's blood was the ink 
in which almost every word of Rousseau's was writ- 
ten. This was the spring of his marvellous power. 
Rousseau : — 

My mother had left a number of romances. These father 
and I betook us to reading during the evenings. At first 
the sole object was, by means of entertaining books, to im- 
prove me in reading; but, ere long, the charm became so 
potent, that we read turn about without intermission, and 
passed whole nights in this employment. Never could we 
break up till the end of the volume. At times my father, 
hearing the swallows of a morning, would exclaim, quite 
ashamed of himself, " Come, let's to bed; I'm more' of a 
child than you are! " 

The elder Rousseau was right respecting himself. 
And such a father would almost necessarily have 
such a child. Jean Jacques Rousseau is to be 
judged tenderly for his faults. What birth and 
what breeding were his! The " Confessions " go 
on : — 

I soon acquired, by this dangerous course, not only an 
extreme facility in reading and understanding, but, for my 
age, a quite unprecedented acquaintance with the passions. 
I had not the slightest conception of things themselves, at 
a time when the whole round of sentiments was already 
perfectly familiar to me. I had apprehended nothing — I 
had felt all. 

Some hint now of other books read by the boy : — 



260 Classic French Course in English. 

With the summer of 1719 the romance-reading termi- 
nated. . . . "The History of the Church and Empire" by 
Lesueur, Bossuet's "Dissertation on Universal History," 
Plutarch's "Lives," Nani's "History of Venice," Ovid's 
"Metamorphoses," "La Bruyere," Fontenelle's "Worlds," 
his " Dialogues of the Dead," and a few volumes of Moliere, 
were transported into my father's shop; and I read them to 
him every day during his work. For this employment I 
acquired a rare, and, for my age, perhaps unprecedented, 
taste. Plutarch especially became my favorite reading. The 
pleasure which I found in incessantly reperusing him, cured 
me in some measure of the romance madness ; and I soon 
came to prefer Agesilaus, Brutus, and Aristides, to Oronda- 
tes, Artemenes, and Juba. From these interesting studies, 
joined to the conversations to which they gave rise with my 
father, resulted that free, republican spirit, that haughty 
and untamable character, fretful of restraint or subjection, 
which has tormented me my life long, and that in situations 
the least suitable for giving it play. Incessantly occupied 
with Rome and Athens, living, so to speak, with their great 
men, born myself the citizen of a republic [Geneva], the son 
of a father with whom patriotism was the ruling passion, I 
caught the flame from him — I imagined myself a Greek 
or a Roman, and became the personage whose life I was 
reading. 

On such food of reading and of reverie, young 
Rousseau's imagination and sentiment battened, 
while his reason and his practical sense starved 
and died within him. Unconsciously thus in part 
was formed the dreamer of the "Emile" and of 
"The Social Contract." Another glimpse of the 
home-life — if home-life such experience can be 
called — of this half-orphan, homeless Genevan 
boy: — 



Rousseau. 261 

I had a brother, my elder by seven years. . . . He fell 
into the ways of debauchery, even before he was old enough 
to be really a libertine. ... I remember once when my 
father was chastising him severely and in anger, that I im- 
petuously threw myself between them, clasping him tightly. 
I thus covered him with my body, receiving the blows that 
were aimed at him; and I held out so persistently in this 
position, that whether softened by my cries and tears, or 
fearing that I should get the worst of it, my father was 
forced to forgive him. In the end my brother turned out 
so bad that he ran away and disappeared altogether. 

It is pathetic — Rousseau's attempted contrast 
following, between the paternal neglect of his older 
brother and the paternal indulgence of himself : — 

If this poor lad was carelessly brought up, it was quite 
otherwise with his brother. . . . My desires were so little 
excited, and so little crossed, that it never came into my 
head to have any. I can solemnly aver, that, till the time 
when I was bound to a master, I never knew what it was 
to have a whim. 

Poor lad ! ' ' Never knew what it was to have 
a whim! " It well might be, however — his boy's 
life all one whim uncrossed, unchecked ; no con- 
trast of saving restraint, to make him know that he 
was living by whim alone! The "Confessions" 
truly say : — 

Thus commenced the formation or the manifestation in 
me of that heart at once so haughty and so tender, of that 
effeminate and yet unconquerable character which, ever 
vacillating between courage and weakness, between virtue 



262 Classic French Coarse in English. 

and yielding to temptation, has all along set me in contra- 
diction to myself, and has resulted in my failing both of 
abstinence and enjoyment, both of prudence and pleasure. 

The half-orphan becomes orphan entire, not by 
the death, but by the withdrawing, of the father. 
That father, having been accused of a misdemeanor, 
"preferred," Rousseau somewhat vaguely sa}^s, 
" to quit Geneva for the remainder of his life, 
rather than give up a point wherein honor and lib- 
erty appeared to him compromised." Jean Jacques 
was sent to board with a parson, who taught him 
Latin, and, along with Latin, supplied, Rousseau 
scornfully says, "all the accompanying mass of 
paltry rubbish styled education." He adds : — 

The country was so entirely new to me, that I could never 
grow weary in my enjoyment of it ; and I acquired so strong 
a liking for it, that it has never become extinguished. 

Young Jean Jacques was at length apprenticed 
to an engraver. He describes the contrast of his 
new situation and the effect of the contrast upon 
his own character and career : — 

I learned to covet in silence, to dissemble, to dissimulate, 
to lie, and at last to steal, —a propensity for which I had 
never hitherto had the slightest inclination, and of which 
I have never since been able quite to cure myself. . . • 

My first theft was the result of complaisance, but it 
opened the door to others which had not so laudable a 
motive. 



. Rousseau. 263 

My master had a journeyman named M. Yerrat. . . . 
[He] took it into his head to rob his mother of some of her 
early asparagus and sell it, converting the proceeds into 
some extra good breakfasts. As he did not wish to expose 
himself, and not being very nimble, he selected me for this 
expedition. . . . Long did I stickle, but he persisted. I 
never could resist kindness, so I consented. I went every 
morning to the garden, gathered the best of the asparagus, 
and took it to "the Molard," where some good creature, 
perceiving that I had just been stealing it, would insinuate 
that little fact, so as to get it the cheaper. In my terror I 
took whatever she chose to give me, and carried it to M. 
Yerrat. 

This little domestic arrangement continued for several 
days before it came into my head to rob the robber, and 
tithe M. Yerrat for the proceeds of the asparagus. ... I 
thus learned that to steal was, after all, not so very terrible 
a thing as I had conceived; and ere long I turned this dis- 
covery to so good an account, that nothing I had an inclina- 
tion for could safely be left within my reach. . . . 

And now, before giving myself over to the fatality of my 
destiny, let me, for a moment, contemplate what would 
naturally have been my lot had I fallen into the hands of a 
better master. Nothing was more agreeable to my tastes, 
nor better calculated to render me happy, than the calm and 
obscure condition of a good artisan, more especially in cer- 
tain lines, such as that of an engraver at Geneva. ... In 
my native country, in the bosom of my religion, of my 
family, and my friends, I. should have led a life gentle and 
uncheckered as became my character, in the uniformity of 
a pleasing occupation and among connections dear to my 
heart. I should have been a good Christian, a good citizen, 
a good father, a good friend, a good artisan, and a good 
man in every respect. I should have loved my station; it 
may be I should have been an honor to it : and after having 
passed an obscure and simple, though even and happy, life, 



264 Classic French Course in English. 

I should peacefully have departed in the bosom of ray kin- 
dred. Soon, it may be, forgotten, I should at least have 
been regretted as long as the remembrance of me survived. 
Instead of this . . . what a picture am I about to draw ! 

Thus ends the first book of the " Confessions." 
The picture Rousseau is " about to draw " has in 
it a certain Madame de Warens for a principal fig- 
ure. (Apprentice Jean Jacques has left his master, 
and entered on a vagabond life.) This lady is a 
character very difficult for us Protestant Americans 
in our contrasted society to conceive as real or as 
possible. She kept a house of, what shall we call 
it? detention, for souls doubtfully in the way of 
being reclaimed from Protestant error into the 
bosom of the Roman-Catholic Church. She was 
herself a Roman-Catholic convert from Protestant- 
ism. She had forsaken a husband, not loved, and 
was living on a bounty from King Victor Amadeus 
of Sardinia. For Annecy, the home of Madame de 
Warens, our young Jean Jacques, sent thither by a 
Roman-Catholic curate, sets out on foot. The dis- 
tance was but one day's walk ; which one day's 
walk, however, the humor of the wanderer stretched 
into a saunter of three days. The man of fifty- 
four, become the biographer of his own youth, finds 
no loathness of self-respect to prevent his detailing 
the absurd adventures with which he diverted him- 
self on the way. For example : — 

Not a country-seat could I see, either to the right or left, 
without going after the adventure which I was certain 



Rousseau. 265 

awaited me. I could not muster courage to enter the man- 
sion, nor even to knock, for I was excessively timid ; but I 
sang beneath the most inviting window, very much aston- 
ished to find, after wasting my breath, that neither lady 
nor miss made her appearance, attracted by the beauty of 
my voice, or the spice of my songs, — seeing that I knew 
some capital ones that my comrades had taught me, and 
which I sang in the most admirable manner. 

Rousseau describes the emotions he experienced 
in his first meeting with Madame de Warens : — 

I had pictured to myself a grim old devotee — M. de 
Pontverre's " worthy lady" could, in my opinion, be none 
other. But lo, a countenance beaming with charms, beau- 
tiful, mild blue eyes, a complexion of dazzling fairness, the 
outline of an enchanting neck ! Xothing escaped the rapid 
glance of the young proselyte; for that instant I was hers, 
sure that a religion preached by such missionaries could not 
fail to lead to paradise ! 

This abnormally susceptible youth had remark- 
able experiences, all within his own soul, during his 
sojourn, of a few days only, on the present occasion, 
under Madame de Warens' s hospitable roof. These 
experiences, the autobiographer, old enough to call 
himself "old dotard," has, nevertheless, not grown 
wise enough to be ashamed to be very detailed and 
psychological in recounting. It was a case of pre- 
cocious love at first sight. One could afford to laugh 
at it as ridiculous, but that it had a sequel full of 
sin and of sorrow. Jean Jacques was now for- 
warded to Turin, to become inmate of a sort of 
charity school for the instruction of catechumens. 
The very day after he started on foot, his father, 



266 Classic French Course in English. 

with a friend of his, reached Annecy on horseback, 
in pursuit of the truant boy. They might easily 
have overtaken him, but they let him go his way. 
Rousseau explains the case on behalf of his father 
as follows : — 

My father was not only an honorable man, but a person 
of the most reliable probity, and endowed with one of those 
powerful minds that perform deeds of loftiest heroism. I 
may add, he was a good father, especially to me. Tenderly 
did he love me, but he loved his pleasures also ; and, since 
our living apart, other ties had, in a measure, weakened his 
paternal affection. He had married again, at Nyon; and 
though his wife was no longer of an age to present me with 
brothers, yet she had connections ; another family-circle was 
thus formed, other objects engrossed his attention, and the 
new domestic relations no longer so frequently brought back 
the remembrance of me. My father was growing old, and 
had nothing on which to rely for the support of his declin- 
ing years. My brother and I had something coming to us 
from my mother's fortune; the interest of this my father 
was to receive during our absence. This consideration did 
not present itself to him directly, nor did it stand in the way 
of his doing his duty ; it had, however, a silent, and to him- 
self imperceptible, influence, and at times slackened his zeal, 
which, unacted upon by this, would have been carried much 
farther. This, I think, was the reason, that, having traced 
me as far as Annecy, he did not follow me to Chamberi, 
where he was morally certain of overtaking me. This will 
also explain why, in visiting him many times after my 
flight, I received from him on every occasion a father's kind- 
ness, though unaccompanied by any very pressing efforts to 
retain me. 

Kousseau's filial regard for his father was pecul- 
iar. It did not lead him to hide, it only led him 



Rousseau. 267 

to account for, his father's sorclidness. The son 
generalized and inferred a moral maxim for the con- 
duct of life from this behavior of the father's, — a 
maxim, which, as he thought, had done him great 
good. He says : — 

This conduct on the part of a father of whose affection 
and virtue I have had so many proofs, has given rise within 
me to reflections on my own character which have not a 
little contributed to maintain my heart uncorrupted. I have 
derived therefrom this great maxim of morality, perhaps 
the only one of any use in practice; namely, to avoid such 
situations as put our duty in antagonism with our interest, 
or disclose our own advantage in the misfortunes of another, 
certain that in such circumstances, however sincere the love 
of virtue we bring with us, it will sooner or later, and 
whether we perceive it or not, become weakened, and we 
shall come to be unjust and culpable in our acts without 
having ceased to be upright and blameless in our intentions. 

The fruitful maxim thus deduced by Rousseau, 
he thinks he tried faithfully to put in practice. 
With apparent perfect assurance concerning him- 
self, he says : — 

I have sincerely desired to do what was right. I have, 
with all the energy of my character, shunned situations 
which set my interest in opposition to the interest of another, 
thus inspiring me with a secret though involuntary desire 
prejudicial to that man. 

Jean Jacques at Turin made speed to convert 
himself, by the abjurations required, into a pretty 
good Catholic. He was hereon free to seek his 



268 Classic French Course in English. 

fortune in the Sardinian capital. This he did by 
getting successively various situations in service. 
In one of these he stole, so he tells us, a piece of 
ribbon, which was soon found in his possession. 
He said a maid-servant, naming her, gave it to him. 
The two were confronted with each other. In spite 
of the poor girl's solemn appeal, Jean Jacques per- 
sisted in his lie against her. Both servants were 
discharged. The autobiographer protests that he 
has suffered much remorse for this lie of his to the 
harm of the innocent maid. He expresses confident 
hope that his suffering sorrow, already experienced 
on this behalf, will stand him in stead of punishment 
that might be his due in a future state. Remorse 
is a note in Rousseau that distinguishes him from 
Montaigne. Montaigne reviews his own life to live 
over his sins, not to repent of them. 

The end of several vicissitudes is, that young 
Rousseau gets back to Madame de Warens. She 
welcomes him kindly. He says : — 

From the first day, the most affectionate familiarity sprang 
up between us, and that to the same degree in which it con- 
tinued during all the rest of her life. Petit — Child — was 
my name, Maman — Mamma — hers ; and Petit and Maman 
we remained, even when the course of time had all but 
effaced the difference of our ages. These two names seem 
to me marvellously well to express our tone towards each 
other, the simplicity of our manners, and, more than all, the 
relation of our hearts. She was to me the tenderest of 
mothers, never seeking her own pleasure, but ever my wel- 
fare ; and if the senses had any thing to do with my attach- 



Rousseau. 269 

ment for her, it was not to change its nature, but only to 
render it more exquisite, and intoxicate me with the charm 
of having a young and pretty mamma whom it was delight- 
ful for me to caress. I say quite literally, to caress; for it 
never entered into her head to deny me the tenderest mater- 
nal kisses and endearments, nor into my heart to abuse 
them. Some may say that, in the end, quite other relations 
subsisted between us. I grant it; but have patience, — I 
cannot tell every thing at once. 

With Madame de Warens, Rousseau's relations, 
as is intimated above, became licentious. This 
continued until, after an interval of years (nine 
years, with breaks), in a fit of jealousy he forsook 
her. Rousseau's whole life was a series of self- 
indulgences, grovelling, sometimes, beyond what is 
conceivable to any one not learning of it all in detail 
from the man's own pen. The reader is fain at 
last to seek the only relief possible from the sicken- 
ing story, by flying to the conclusion that Jean 
Jacques Rousseau, with all his genius, was wanting 
in that mental sanity which is a condition of com- 
plete moral responsibility. 

We shall, of course, not follow the "Confessions " 
through their disgusting recitals of sin and shame. 
We should do wrong, however, to the literary, and 
even to the moral, character of the work, were we 
not to point out that there are frequent oases of 
sweetness and beauty set in the wastes of incred- 
ible foulness which overspread so widely the pages 
of Rousseau's " Confessions." Here, for exam- 
ple, is an idyll of vagabondage that might almost 



270 Classic French Course in English. 

make one willing to play tramp one's self, if one by 
so doing might have such an experience : — 

I remember, particularly, having passed a delicious night 
without the city on a road that skirted the Rhone or the 
Saone, for I cannot remember which. On the other side 
were terraced gardens. It had been a very warm day ; the 
evening was charming; the dew moistened the faded grass; 
a calm night, without a breeze; the air was cool without 
being cold ; the sun in setting had left crimson vapors in the 
sky, which tinged the water with its roseate hue, while the 
trees along the terrace were filled with nightingales gushing 
out melodious answers to each other's song. I walked along 
in a species of ecstasy, giving up heart and senses to the 
enjoyment of the scene, only slightly sighing with regret at 
enjoying it alone. Absorbed in my sweet reverie, I pro- 
longed my walk far into the night, without perceiving that 
I was wearied out. At length I discovered it. I lay volup- 
tuously down on the tablet of a sort of niche or false door 
sunk in the terrace wall. The canopy of my couch was 
formed by the over-arching boughs of the trees ; a nightingale 
sat exactly above me ; its song lulled me to sleep ; my slum- 
ber was sweet, and my awaking still more so. It was broad 
day; my eyes, on opening, fell on the water, the verdure, and 
the admirable landscape spread out before me. I arose and 
shook off dull sleep ; and, growing hungry, I gayly directed 
my steps towards the city, bent on transforming two pieces 
de six blancs that I had left, into a good breakfast. I was 
so cheerful that I went singing along the whole way. 

This happy-go-lucky, vagabond, grown-up child, 
this sentimentalist of genius, had now and then dif- 
ferent experiences, — experiences to which the re- 
flection of the man grown old attributes important 
influence on the formation of his most controlling 
beliefs : — 



Rousseau. 271 

One day, among others, having purposely turned aside to 
get a closer view of a spot that appeared worthy of all 
admiration, I grew so delighted with it, and wandered round 
it so often, that I at length lost myself completely. After 
several hours of useless walking, weary and faint with hun- 
ger and thirst, I entered a peasant's hut which did not pre- 
sent a very promising appearance, but it was the only one I 
saw around. I conceived it to be here as at Geneva and 
throughout Switzerland, where all the inhabitants in easy 
circumstances are in the situation to exercise hospitality. I 
entreated the man to get me some dinner, offering to pay 
for it. He presented me with some skimmed milk and 
coarse barley bread, observing that that was all he had. I 
drank the milk with delight, and ate the bread, chaff and 
all; but this was not very restorative to a man exhausted 
with fatigue. The peasant, who was watching me narrowly, 
judged of the truth of my story by the sincerity of my appe- 
tite. All of a sudden, after having said that he saw perfectly 
well that I was a good and true young fellow that did not 
come to betray him, he opened a little trap-door by the side 
of his kitchen, went down and returned a moment after- 
wards with a good brown loaf of pure wheat, the remains of 
a toothsome ham, and a bottle of wine, the sight of which 
rejoiced my heart more than all the rest. To these he 
added a good thick omelette, and I made such a dinner as 
none but a walker ever enjoyed. When it came to pay, lo ! 
his disquietude and fears again seized him ; he would none of 
my money, and rejected it with extraordinary manifestations 
of disquiet. The funniest part of the matter was, that I 
could not conceive what he was afraid of. At length, with 
fear and trembling, he pronounced those terrible words, 
Commissioners and Cellar-rats. He gave me to understand 
that he concealed his wine because of the excise, and his 
bread on account of the tax, and that he was a lost man if 
they got the slightest inkling that he was not dying of hunger. 
Every thing he said to me touching this matter, whereof, 



272 Classic French Course in English. 

indeed, I had not the slightest idea, produced an impression 
on me that can never be effaced. It became the germ of 
that inextinguishable hatred that afterwards sprang up in 
my heart against the vexations to which these poor people 
are subject, and against their oppressors. This man, though 
in easy circumstances, dared not eat the bread he had gained 
by the sweat of his brow, and could escape ruin only by 
presenting the appearance of the same misery that reigned 
around him. 

A hideously false world, that world of French 
society was, in Rousseau's time. The falseness was 
full ripe to be laid bare by some one ; and Rous- 
seau's experience of life, as well as his temperament 
and his genius, fitted him to do the work of expos- 
ure that he did. What we emphatically call char- 
acter was sadly wanting in Rousseau — how sadly, 
witness such an acted piece of mad folly as the 
following : — 

I, without knowing aught of the matter, . . . gave myself 
out for a [musical] composer. Nor was this all: having 
been presented to M. de Freytorens, law-professor, who 
loved music, and gave concerts at his house, nothing would 
do but I must give him a sample of my talent ; so I set about 
composing a piece for his concert quite as boldly as though 
I had really been an adept in the science. I had the con- 
stancy to work for fifteen days on this fine affair, to copy it 
fair, write out the different parts, and distribute them with 
as much assurance as though it had been a masterpiece of 
harmony. Then, what will scarcely be believed, but which 
yet is gospel truth, worthily to crown this sublime produc- 
tion, I tacked to the end thereof a pretty minuet which was 
then having a run on the streets. ... I gave it as my own 



Rousseau. 273 

just as resolutely as though I had been speaking to inhabit- 
ants of the moon. 

They assembled to perform my piece. I explain to each 
the nature of the movement, the style of execution, and the 
relations of the parts — I was very full of business. For 
five or six minutes they were tuning; to me each minute 
seemed an age. At length, all being ready, I rap with a 
handsome paper baton on the leader's desk the five or six 
beats of the "Make ready." Silence is made — I gravely 
set to beating time — they commence ! No, never since 
French operas began, was there such a charivari heard. 
Whatever they might have thought of my pretended talent, 
the effect was worse than they could possibly have imagined. 
The musicians choked with laughter; the auditors opened 
their eyes, and would fain have closed their ears. But that 
was an impossibility. My tormenting set of symphonists, 
w T ho seemed rather to enjoy the fun, scraped away with a 
din sufficient to crack the tympanum of one born deaf. I 
had the firmness to go right ahead, however, sweating, it is 
true, at every pore, but held back by shame ; not daring to 
retreat, and glued to the spot. For my consolation I heard 
the company whispering to each other, quite loud enough for 
it to reach my ear: "It is not bearable!" said one. "What 
music gone mad! " cried another. " What a devilish din! " 
added a third. Poor Jean Jacques, little dreamed you, in 
that cruel moment, that one day before the King of France 
and all the court, thy sounds would excite murmurs of sur- 
prise and applause, and that in all the boxes around thee 
the loveliest ladies would burst forth with, " What charming 
sounds! what enchanting music! every strain reaches the 
heart!" 

But what restored every one to good humor was the 
minuet. Scarcely had they played a few measures than I 
heard bursts of laughter break out on all hands. Every one 
congratulated me on my fine musical taste ; they assured me 
that this minuet would make rne spoken about, and that I 



274 Classic French Course in English. 

merited the loudest praises. I need not attempt depicting 
my agony, nor own that I well deserved it. 

Readers have now had an opportunity to judge for 
themselves, by specimen, of the style, both of the 
writer and of the man Jean Jacques Rousseau. 
The writer's style they must have felt, even through 
the medium of imperfect anonymous translation, to 
be a charming one. If they have felt the style of 
the man to be contrasted, as squalor is contrasted 
with splendor, that they must not suppose to be a 
contrast of which Jean Jacques himself, the con- 
fessor, was in the least displacently conscious. Far 
from it. In a later part of his u Confessions," a 
part that deals with the author as one already now 
acknowledged a power in the world of letters, though 
with all his chief works still to write, Rousseau 
speaks thus of himself (he was considering at the 
time the ways and means available to him of obtain- 
ing a livelihood) : — 

I felt that writing for bread would soon have extinguished 
my genius, and destroyed my talents, which were less in my 
pen than in my heart, and solely proceeded from an elevated 
and noble manner of thinking. ... It is too difficult to 
think nobly when we think for a livelihood. 

Is not that finely said? And one need not doubt 
that it was said with perfect sincerity. For our 
own part, paradoxical though it be to declare it, we 
are wholly willing to insist that Rousseau did think 



Rousseau. 275 

on a lofty plane. The trouble with him was, not 
that he thus thought with his heart, rather than with 
his head, — which, however, he did, — but that he 
thought with his heart alone, and not at all with 
his conscience and his will. In a word, his thought 
was sentiment rather than thought. He was a senti- 
mentalist instead of a thinker. One illustration of 
the divorce that he decreed for himself, or rather — 
for we have used too positive a form of expression 
— that he allowed to subsist, between sentiment 
and conduct, will suffice. It was presently to be 
his fortune, as author of a tract on education (the 
u £mile"), to change the habit of a nation in the 
matter of nurture for babes. French mothers of 
the higher social class in Rousseau's time almost 
universally gave up their infants to be nursed at 
alien bosoms. Rousseau so eloquently denounced 
the unuaturalness of this, that from his time it be- 
came the fashion for French mothers to suckle their 
children themselves. Meantime, the preacher him- 
self of this beautiful humanity, living in unweddecl 
union with a woman (not Madame de TTarens, but a 
woman of the laboring class, found after Madame de 
Warens was abandoned), sent his illegitimate chil- 
dren, against the mother's remonstrance, one after 
another, to the number of five, to be brought up un- 
known at the hospital for foundlings ! He tells the 
story himself in his " Confessions." This course 
on his own part he subsequently laments with many 
tears and many self-upbraidings. But these, alas, 



276 Classic French Course in English. 

he intermingles with self-justifications, nearly as 
many, — so that at last it is hard to say whether the 
balance of his judgment inclines for or against him- 
self in the matter. A paradox of inconsistencies 
and self-contradictions, this man, — a problem in 
human character, of v which the supposition of partial 
insanity in him, long working subtly in the blood, 
seems the only solution. The occupation finally 
adopted by Rousseau for obtaining subsistence, was 
the copying of music. It extorts from one a meas- 
ure of involuntary respect for Rousseau, to see 
patiently toiling at this slavish work, to earn its 
owner bread, the same pen that had lately set all 
Europe in ferment with the " fimile " and " The So- 
cial Contract.' ' 

From Rousseau's " Confessions," we have not 
room to purvey further. It is a melancholy book, — 
written under monomaniac suspicion on the part of 
the author that he was the object of a wide-spread 
conspiracy against his reputation, his peace of mind, 
and even his life. The poor, shattered, self-con- 
sumed sensualist and sentimentalist paid dear in the 
agonies of his closing years for the indulgences of 
an unregulated life. The tender-hearted, really 
affectionate and loyal, friend came at length to live 
in a world of his own imagination, full of treachery 
to himself. David Hume, the Scotchman, tried to 
befriend him ; but the monomaniac was incapable of 
being befriended. Nothing could be more pitiful 
than were the decline and the extinction that 



Rousseau. 271 

occurred of so much brilliant genius, and so much 
lovable character. It is even doubtful whether 
Rousseau did not at last take his own life. The 
voice of accusation is silenced, in the presence of 
an earthly retribution so dreadful. One may not 
indeed approve, but one may at least be free to pity, 
more than he blames, in judging Rousseau. 

Accompanying, and in some sort complementing, 
the "Confessions," are often published several 
detached pieces called "Reveries," or "Walks." 
These are very peculiar compositions, and very 
characteristic of the author. They are dreamy 
meditations or reveries, sad, even sombre, in spirit, 
but " beautiful exceedingly," in form of expression. 
Such works as the "Rene" of Chateaubriand, 
works but too abundant since in French literature, 
must all trace their pedigree to Rousseau's " Walks." 
We introduce two specimen extracts. The shadow 
of Rousseau's monomania will be felt thick upon 
them : — 

It is dow fifteen years since I have been in this strange 
situation, which yet appears to me like a dream; ever im- 
agining that, disturbed by indigestion, I sleep uneasily, but 
shall soon awake, freed from my troubles, but surrounded 
by my friends. . . . 

How could I possibly foresee the destiny that awaited 
me ? . . . Could I. if in my right senses, suppose that one 
day, the man I was, and yet remain, should be taken, with- 
out any kind of doubt, for a monster, a poisoner, an assas- 
sin, the horror of the human race, the sport of the rabble, 
my only salutation to be spit upon, and that a whole genera- 



278 Classic French Course in English. 

tion would unanimously amuse themselves in burying me 
alive ? When this strange revolution first happened, taken 
by unawares, I was overwhelmed with astonishment ; my 
agitation, my indignation, plunged me into a delirium, 
which ten years have scarcely been able to calm : during 
this interval, falling from error to error, from fault to fault, 
and folly to folly, I have, by my imprudence, furnished the 
contrivers of my fate with instruments, which they have 
artfully employed to fix it without resource. . . . 

Every future occurrence will be immaterial to me ; I have 
in the world neither relative, friend, nor brother ; I am on 
the earth as if I had fallen into some unknown planet ; if 
I contemplate any thing around me, it is only distressing, 
heart-rending objects ; every thing I cast my eyes on conveys 
some new subject either of indignation or affliction ; I will 
endeavor henceforward to banish from my mind all painful 
ideas which unavailingly distress me. Alone for the rest of 
my life, I must only look for consolation, hope, or peace in 
my own breast; and neither ought nor will, henceforward, 
think of any thing but myself. It is in this state that I re- 
turn to the continuation of that severe and just examination 
which formerly I called my Confessions ; I consecrate my 
latter days to the study of myself, and to the preparation of 
that account which I must shortly render up of my actions. 
I resign my thoughts entirely to the pleasure of conversing 
with my own soul ; that being the only consolation that 
man cannot deprive me of. If by dint of reflection on my 
internal propensities, I can attain to putting them in better 
order, and correcting the evil that remains in me, these 
meditations will not be utterly useless ; and though I am 
accounted worthless on earth, shall not cast away my latter 
days. The leisure of my daily walks has frequently been 
filled with charming contemplations, which I regret having 
forgot ; but I will write down those that occur in future ; 
then, every time I read them over, I shall forget my misfor- 



Rousseau. 279 

tunes, disgraces, and persecutors, in recollecting and con- 
templating the integrity of my own heart. 

Kousseau's books in general are now little read. 
The}' worked their work, and ceased. But there are 
in some of them passages that continue to live. 
Of these, perhaps quite the most famous is the 
" Savoyard Curate's Confession of Faith," a docu- 
ment of some length, incorporated into the ic Emile." 
This, taken as a whole, is the most seductively elo- 
quent argument against Christianity that perhaps 
ever was written. It contains, however, concessions 
to the sublime elevation of Scripture and to the 
unique virtue and majesty of Jesus, which are often 
quoted, and which will bear quoting here. The 
Savoyard Curate is represented speaking to a young 
friend as follows : — 

I will confess to you further, that the majesty of the 
Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the 
gospel hath its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of 
our philosophers with all their pomp of diction ; how mean, 
how contemptible, are they, compared with the Scripture ! 
Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime 
should be merely the work of man ? Is it possible that the 
Sacred Personage, whose history it contains, should be him- 
self a mere man '? Do we find that he assumed the tone of 
an enthusiast or ambitious sectary ? What sweetness, what 
purity, in his manners ! What an affecting gracefulness in 
his delivery ! What sublimity in his maxims ! What pro- 
found wisdom in his discourses ! What presence of mind, 
what subtilty, what truth, in his replies ! How great the 
command over his passions ! Where is the man, where the 



280 Classic French Course in English. 

philosopher, who could so live and die, without weakness 
and without ostentation ? When Plato described his imagi- 
nary good man loaded with all the shame of guilt, yet mer- 
iting the highest reward of virtue, he described exactly the 
character of Jesus Christ : the resemblance was so striking 
that all the Fathers perceived it. 

What prepossession, what blindness, must it be to compare 
the son of Sophroniscus to the Son of Mary ! What an in- 
finite disproportion there is between them ! Socrates, dying 
without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to 
the last ; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned 
his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates, with 
all his wisdom, was any thing more than a vain sophist. 
He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, how- 
ever, had before put them in practice ; he had only to say 
what they had done, and reduce their examples to precepts. 
Aristides had been just before Socrates defined justice ; 
Leonidas gave up his life for his country before Socrates de- 
clared patriotism to be a duty ; the Spartans were a sober 
people before Socrates recommended sobriety ; before he had 
even defined virtue, Greece abounded in virtuous men. But 
where could Jesus learn, among his compatriots, that pure 
and sublime morality of which he only has given us both 
precept and example ? The greatest wisdom was made 
known amidst the most bigoted fanaticism, and the simpli- 
city of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people 
on the earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophiz- 
ing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could 
be wished for ; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of ago- 
nizing pains, abused, insulted, cursed by a whole nation, is 
the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiv- 
ing the cup of poison, blessed indeed the weeping execu- 
tioner who administered it ; but Jesus, in the midst of 
excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. 
Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, 
the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we 



Rousseau. 281 

suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction ? Indeed, my 
friend, it bears not the marks of fiction ; on the contrary, 
the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is 
not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a suppo- 
sition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty without removing it ; 
it is more inconceivable that a number of persons should 
agree to write such a history, than that one only should fur- 
nish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable 
of the diction, and strangers to the morality contained in 
the gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and 
inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonishing 
character than the hero. 

So far in eloquent ascription of incomparable ex- 
cellence to the Bible and to the Founder of Christi- 
anity. But then immediately Rousseau's Curate 
proceeds : — 

And yet, with all this, the same gospel abounds with 
incredible relations, with circumstances repugnant to rea- 
son, and which it is impossible for a man of sense either to 
conceive or admit. 

The compliment to Christianity almost convinces 
you, — until suddenly you are apprised that the au- 
thor of the compliment was not convinced himself ! 

Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the preface to his 
" Confessions," appealed from the judgment of men 
to the judgment of God. This judgment it was his 
habit, to the end of his days, thanks to the effect 
of his early Genevan education, always to think of 
as certainly impending. Let us adjourn our final 
sentence upon him, until we hear that Omniscient 
award. 



282 Classic French Course in English. 
XVII. 

THE ENCYCLOPAEDISTS. 

A cenotaph is a monument erected to the memory 
of one dead, but not marking the spot in which his 
remains rest. The present chapter is a cenotaph to 
the French Encyclopaedists. It is in the nature of 
a memorial of their literary work, but it will be 
found to contain no specimen extracts from their 
writings. 

Everybody has heard of the Encyclopaedists of 
France. Who are they? They are a group of men 
who, during the eighteenth century, associated them- 
selves together for the production of a great work 
to be the repository of all human knowledge, — in 
one word, of an encyclopaedia. The project was a 
laudable one ; and the motive to it was laudable — 
in part. For there was mixture of. motive in the 
case. In part, the motive was simple desire to 
advance the cause of human enlightenment ; in 
part, however, the motive was desire to undermine 
Christianity. This latter end the encyclopaedist 
collaborators may have thought to be an indispen- 
sable means subsidiary to the former end. They 
probably did think so — with such imperfect sincer- 
ity as is possible to those who set themselves, con- 
sciously or unconsciously, against God. The fact 



The Encyclopedists. 283 

is, that s the Encyclopaedists came at length to be 
nearly as much occupied in extinguishing Christian- 
ity, as in promoting public enlightenment. They 
went about this their task of destroying, in a way 
as effective as has ever been devised for accomplish- 
ing a similar work. They gave a vicious turn of 
insinuation against Christianity to as many arti- 
cles as possible. In the most unexpected places, 
throughout the entire work, pitfalls were laid of 
anti- Christian implication, awaiting the unwary feet 
of the reader. You were nowhere sure of your 
ground. The world has never before seen, it has 
never seen since, an example of propagandism alto- 
gether so adroit and so alert. It is not too much 
to say further, that history can supply few instances 
of propagandism so successful. The Encyclopae- 
dists might almost be said to have given the human 
mind a fresh start and a new orbit. The fresh 
start is, perhaps, spent ; the new orbit has at length, 
to a great extent, returned upon the old ; but it 
holds true, nevertheless, that the Encyclopaedists of 
France were for a time, and that not a short time, 
a prodigious force of impulsion and direction to the 
Occidental mind. It ought to be added that the 
aim of the Encyclopaedists was political also, not 
less than religious. In truth, religion and politics, 
Church and State, in their day, and in France, were 
much the same thing. The " Encyclopaedia " was 
as revolutionary in politics as it was atheistic in 
religion. 



284 Classic French Course in English. 

The leader in this movement of insurrectionary 
thought was Denis Diderot. Diderot (1713-1784) 
was born to be an encyclopaedist, and a captain of 
encyclopaedists. Force inexhaustible, and inex- 
haustible willingness to give out force ; unappeas- 
able curiosity to know ; irresistible impulse to impart 
knowledge ; versatile capacity to do every thing, car- 
ried to the verge, if not carried beyond the verge, 
of incapacity to do any thing thoroughly well ; 
quenchless zeal and quenchless hope ; levity enough 
of temper to keep its subject free from those depres- 
sions of spirit and those cares of conscience which 
weigh and wear on the over-earnest man ; abundant 
physical health, — gifts such as these made up the 
manifold equipment of Diderot for rowing and steer- 
ing the gigantic enterprise of the " Encyclopaedia " 
triumphantly to the port of final completion, through 
many and many a zone of stormy adverse wind and 
sea, traversed on the way. Diderot produced no 
signal independent and original work of his own ; 
probably he could not have produced such a work. 
On the other hand, it is simply just to say that 
hardly anybody but Diderot could have achieved the 
" Encyclopaedia." That, indeed, may be considered 
an achievement not more to the glory, than to the 
shame, of its author ; but whatever its true moral 
character, in whatever proportion shameful or glori- 
ous, it is inalienably and peculiarly Diderot's achieve- 
ment ; at least in this sense, that without Diderot the 
u Encyclopaedia " would never have been achieved. 



The Encyclopcedists. 285 

We have already, in discussing Voltaire, adverted 
sufficiently to Mr. John Morley 's volumes in honor 
of Diderot and his compeers. Diderot is therein 
ably presented in the best possible light to the 
reader ; and we are bound to say, that, despite Mr. 
Morley's friendly endeavors, Diderot therein appears 
very ill. He married a young woman, whose simple 
and touching self-sacrifice on her husband's behalf, 
he presently requited by giving himself away, body 
and soul, to a rival. In his writings, he is so easily 
insincere, that not unfrequently it is a problem, even 
for his biographer, to decide when he is expressing 
his sentiments truly and when not ; insomuch that, 
once and again, Mr. Morley himself is obliged to 
say, "This is probably hypocritical on Diderot's 
part," or something to that effect. As for filthy 
communication out of his mouth and from his pen, — 
not, of course, habitual, but occasional, — the subject 
will not bear more than this mention. These be thy 
gods, O Atheism! one, in reading Mr. Morley on 
Diderot, is tempted again and again to exclaim. 
To offset such lowness of character in the man, it 
must in justice be added that Diderot was, notwith- 
standing, of a generous, uncalculating turn of mind, 
not grudging, especially in intellectual relations, to 
give of his best to others, expecting nothing again. 
Diderot, too, as well as Voltaire, had his royal or 
imperial friends, in the notorious Empress Catherine 
of Kussia, and in King Stanislaus of Poland. He 
visited Catherine once in her capital, and was there 



286 Classic French Course in English. 

munificently entertained by her. She was regally 
pleased to humor this gentleman of France, permit- 
ting him to bring down his fist in gesture violently 
on the redoubtable royal knee, according to a pleas- 
ant way Diderot had of emphasizing a point in 
familiar conversation. His truest claim to praise 
for intellectual superiority is, perhaps, that he was 
a prolific begetter of wit in other men. 

D'Alembert (Jean le Rond, 1717-1783) was 
an eminent mathematician. He wrote especially, 
though not at first exclusively, on mathematical 
subjects, for the "Encyclopaedia." He was, in- 
deed, at the outset, published as mathematical editor 
of the work. His European reputation in science 
made his name a tower of strength to the Ci Enc} r clo- 
paedia," — even after he ceased to be an editorial 
coadjutor in the enterprise. For there came a 
time when D'Alembert abdicated responsibility as 
editor, and left the undertaking to fall heavily on 
the single shoulder, Atlantean shoulder it proved to 
be, of Diderot. The celebrated " Preliminary Dis- 
course," prefixed to the " Enc} 7 clopaadia," proceeded 
from the hand of D'Alembert. This has always 
been esteemed a masterpiece of comprehensive grasp 
and lucid exposition. A less creditable contribu- 
tion of D'Alembert's to the "Encyclopaedia" was 
his article on " Geneva," in the course of which, at 
the instance of Voltaire, who wanted a chance to 
have his plays represented in that city, he went out 
of his way to recommend to the Genevans that they 



The Encyclopaedists. 287 

establish for themselves a theatre. This brought 
out Rousseau iu au eloquent harangue against the 
theatre as exerting influence to debauch public 
morals. D'Alembert, in the contest, did not carry 
off the honors of the day. D'Alerabert's "filoges," 
so called, a series of characterizations and appre- 
ciations written by the author in his old age, of 
members of the French Academy, enjo}' deserved 
reputation for sagacious intellectual estimate, and 
for clear, though not supremely elegant, style of 
composition. 

Diderot and D'Alembert are the only men whose 
names appear on the titlepage of the 4 c Enc} T clopa> 
dia ; " but Voltaire, Rousseau, Turgot, Helve tius, 
Duclos, Condillac, Buffon, Grimm, D'Holbach, with 
many others whom we must not stay even to men- 
tion, contributed to the work. 

The influence of the " Encyclopaedia," great dur- 
ing its day, is by no means yet exhausted. But it 
is an influence indirectly exerted, for the " Encyclo- 
paedia " itself has long been an obsolete work. 

There is a legal maxim that the laws are silent, 
when a state of war exists. Certainly, amid the 
madness of a Revolution such as, during the closing 
years of the eighteenth century, the influence of 
Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopaedists, with 
Beaumarchais, reacting against the accumulated po- 
litical and ecclesiastical oppressions of ages, precip- 
itated upon France, it might safely be assumed 
that letters would be silent. But the nation mean- 



288 Classic French Course in English. 

time was portentously preparing material for a litera- 
ture which many wondering centuries to follow would 
occupy themselves with writing. 



XVIII. 

EPILOGUE. 



In looking backward over the preceding pages, 
we think of many things which we should like still 
to say. Of these many things, we limit ourselves 
to saying here, as briefly as we can, some four or 
five only. 

To begin with, in nearly every successive case, 
we have found ourselves lamenting afresh that, from 
the authors to be represented, the representative ex- 
tracts must needs be so few and so short. We have, 
therefore, sincerely begrudged to ourselves every 
line of room that we felt obliged to occupy with 
matter, preparatory, explanatory, or critical, of our 
own. Whatever success we may have achieved in 
fulfilling our purpose, our purpose has been to say 
ourselves barely so much as was indispensable in 
order finally to convey, upon the whole, to our read- 
ers, within the allotted space, the justest and the 
fullest impression of the selected authors, through 
the medium of their own quoted words. 

In the second place, it was with great regret that 
we yielded to the necessity of omitting entirely, or 



Epilogue. 289 

dismissing with scant mention, such literary names, 
for example, as Boileau, of the age of Louis Qua- 
torze, and, a little later than he, Fontenelle, span- 
ning with his century of years the space from 1657 
to 1757, — these, and, belonging to the period that 
ushered in the Revolution, Bernardin St. Pierre, 
the teller of the tale of " Paul and Virginia," with 
also that hero of a hundred romantic adventures, 
Beaumarchais, half Themistocles, half Alcibiades, 
the author of "The Barber of Seville." The line 
had to be drawn somewhere ; and, whether wisely or 
not, at least thoughtfully, we drew it to run as it does. 

A third, and a yet graver, occasion of regret was 
that we must stop short on the threshold, without 
crossing it, of the nineteenth-century literature of 
France. With so many shining names seen just 
ahead of us, beacon-like, to invite our advance, we 
felt it as a real self-denial to stay our steps at that 
point. We hope still to deal with Chateaubriand, 
Madame de Stael, Lamartine, Alfred de Musset, 
Sainte-Beuve, Victor Hugo, and perhaps others, in 
a future volume. 

Our eye is caught with the antithetical terms, 
"classicism" and "romanticism," occurring here 
and there ; and the observation is forced upon us, 
that these terms, in their mutual relation, are no- 
where by us defined. The truth is, they scarcely, 
as thus used, admit of hard and fast definition. It 
is in a somewhat loose conventional sense of each 
term, that, in late literary language, they are set 



290 Classic French Course in English. 

off, one over against the other. They name two 
different, but by no means necessarily antagonistic, 
forces or tendencies in literature. Classicism stands 
for what you might call the established order, against 
which romanticism is a revolt. Paradoxical though 
it be to say so, both the established order, and the 
revolt against it, are good things. The established 
order, which was never really any thing more or 
less than the dominance in literature of rules and 
standards derived through criticism from the ac- 
knowledged best models, especially the ancient, 
tended at last to cramp and stifle the life which it 
should, of course, only serve to shape and conform. 
The mould, always too narrow perhaps, but at any 
rate grown too rigid, needed itself to be fashioned 
anew. Fresh life, a full measure, would do this. 
Such is the true mission of romanticism, — not to 
break the mould that classicism sought to impose 
on literaiy production, but to expand that mould, 
make it more pliant, more free. A mould, for 
things living and growing, should be plastic in the 
passive, as well as in the active, sense of that word, 
— should accept form, as well as give form. Ro- 
manticism will accordingly have won its legitimate 
victory, not when it shall have destroyed classicism 
and replaced it, but when it shall have made classi- 
cism over, after the law of a larger life. To risk a 
concrete illustration — among our American poets, 
Bryant, in the perfectly self-consistent unity of his 
whole intellectual development, may be said to rep- 



Epilogue. 291 

resent classicism ; while in Lowell, as Lowell ap- 
pears in the later, more protracted, phase of his 
genius, romanticism is represented. The u Thana- 
topsis" of Bryant and the "Cathedral" of Lowell 
may stand for individual examples respectively of 
the classic and the romantic styles in poetry. Com- 
pare these two productions, and in the difference 
between the chaste, well-pruned severity of the one, 
and the indulged, perhaps stimulated, luxuriance of 
the other, you will feel the difference between classi- 
cism and romanticism. But Victor Hugo is the 
great recent romanticist ; and when, hereafter, we 
come to speak somewhat at large of him, it will be 
seasonable to enter more fully into the question of 
these two tendencies in literature. 

We cannot consent to have said here our very 
last word, without emphasizing once again our sense 
of the really extraordinary pervasiveness in French 
literature of that element in it which one does not 
like to name, even to condemn it, — we mean its 
impurity. The influence of French literary models, 
very strong among us just now, must not be per- 
mitted insensibly to pervert our own cleaner and 
sweeter national habit and taste in this matter. 
But we, all of us together, need to be both vigilant 
and firm ; for the beginnings of corruption here are 
very insidious. Let us never grow ashamed of our 
saving Saxon shamefacedness. They may nick- 
name it prudery, if they will ; but let us, American 
and English, for our part, always take pride in such 
prudery. 



INDEX, 



[The pronunciation of proper names in this index is taken from the 
Pronouncing Biographical Dictionary appended to Webster's Unabridged 
Dictionary. For certain convenient guiding rules in French pronuncia- 
tion, the student is referred to pp. 1682-1684, inclusive, of that work.] 



Ab'e-lard (1079-1142) , 6. 
Academy, French, 10, 12, 75, 156, 

287. 
^Es'chy-lus, 94, 152, 166, 168. 
./E'sop, 85. 
Al-ci-bi'a-des, 289. 
Alembert. See D'Alembert. 
Al-ex-an'der (the Great), 5, 131. 
Al-ex-an'drine, 5, 86, 153. 
Am-y-ot' (a-me-o'), Jacques (1513- 

1593), 8. 
An'ge-lo, Michel, 156. 
Ariosto, 245, 247. 
Ar'is-tot-le, 50. 
Ar-nauld' (ar-no')> Antoine (1612- 

1694), 119. 
Arthur (King), 5. 
Au'gus-tine, St., Latin Christian 

Father, 83. 
Au-gus'tus (the Emperor), 131. 

Ba'con, Francis, 48, 63. 
Ba'ker, Jehu, 226. 
Ba'laam, 154. 



Bal'zac, Jean Louis Guez de (1594- 

1654), 10, 11. 
Beau-mar-chais', de (bd-mar-sha')> 

Pierre Augustin Caron (1732- 

1799), 287, 289. 
Benedictines, 29. 
Boi-leau'-Des-pre-aux' (bwa-lo'-da- 

pra-oO , Nicolas (1636-1711) , 9, 12, 

14, 83, 84, 167, 168, 171, 289. 
Bolton, A. S., 69. 
BOS-SU-ET' (bo-su-a'), Jacques Be- 

nigne (1627-1704), 11, 12, 77, 127, 

166, 170, 182-188, 205, 206, 224, 225. 
BOUR-DA-LOUE', Louis (1632- 

1704), 3, 12, 77, 143, 148, 182, 185, 

188, 189-197, 198, 201, 202. 
Brook Farm, 38. 

Bry'ant, William Cullen, 290, 291. 
Buckle, Henry Thomas, 234. 
Buffon (biif-foNO, Georges Louis 

Leclerc de (1707-1788), 287. 
Bur'gun-dy, Duke of (1682-1712), 

177, 207, 208, 209, 214, 216. 
Burke, Edmund, 48, 75. 



293 



294 



Index. 



Bus'sy, Count, 135. 
By'ron, Lord, 48. 

Caesar, Julius, 56, 131. 

Calas, Jean, 253. 

Calvin, John (1509-1564), 7. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 251, 255. 

Catherine (Empress of Russia), 285. 

Cham-forf (shoN'for'), Sebastien 

Roch Nicolas (1741-1794), 85. 
Chanson (shoN'soN',), 5. 
Char-le -magne' (shar-le-man / ), 5. 
Charles I. (of England), 170, 185. 
Charles IX. (of France), 63. 
Cha-teau-bri-and' (sha-to-bre-ON') , 

Francois Auguste de (1768-1848), 

3, 13, 14, 206, 277, 289. 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 5, 20. 
« Classicism," 10, 14, 289, 290. 
Claude, Jean (1619-1687), 182. 
Coleridge, S. T., 7, 34, 43. 
Comines (ko-meen'), Philippe de 

(1445-1509), 7, 25, 28. 
Conde (koN-da'), Prince of, "The 

Great Conde" (1621-1686), 144. 
Condillac (koN-de-yak')> Etienne 

Bonnot de (1715-1780), 287. 
Condorcet (koN-dor-sa/), Marie 

Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat de 

(1743-1794), 128. 
CORNEILLE (kor-nal'), Pierre 

(1606-1684), 2, 11, 12, 16, 78, 79, 

80, 151-166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 182, 

183, 239. 
Cotin, 100. 

Cotton, Charles (1630-1687), 44,48. 
Cousin (koo-zaN'), Victor (1792- 

1867), 128. 

D'Alembert (da-loN-beV), Jean le 
Rond (1717-1783), 13, 251, 286, 
287. 

Dante, 50, 93, 94, 114. 



David (King), 198. 

Descartes (da-karf), Rene (1596- 

1650), 11, 12, 104, 115. 
D'Holbach (dol-bak'), Paul Henri 

Thyry (1723-1789), 287. 
Dickens, Charles, 35, 149. 
Diderot (de-dro'), Denis (1713- 

1784), 13, 237, 250, 284, 285, 286, 

287. 
Dryden, John, 48, 166. 
Duclos (du-kloO, Charles Pineau 

(1704-1772), 287. 

" Ecrasez Vlnfame" 252. 
Edinburgh Review, 140. 
Edward (the Black Prince), 21-25. 
Edwards, President, 194. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 49, 51, 52, 

61. 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 18. 
ENCYCLOPEDISTS, 13, 218, 249, 

250, 282-288. 
Epictetus, 65. 
Epicurus, 50. 
Erasmus, 43, 126. 
Euripides, 153, 166, 171. 

Fabliaux (faVle-50, 6. 

Faugere (f5-zher'), Arnaud Prosper 

(1810- )il28. 
FENELOff f fan-Ion'), Francois de 

Saliguac de la Mothe (1651-1715), 

12, 85, 177, 178, 181, 205-224. 
Flechier (fla-she-a'), Esprit (1632- 

1710), 182. 
Foix (fwa), Count de, 26, 27. 
Fontenelle (foNt-neT), Bernard le 

Bovier (1657-1757), 289. 
Franciscans, 29. 
Frederick (the Great) , 254. 
Friar John, 40. 
FROISSART (frwa-sarO, Jean 

(1337-1410?), 7, 1S-28. 



Index. 



295 



Gaillard (ga-yar')) Gabriel Henri 

(1726-1806), 155. 
Gar-gant'ua, 29, 36, 37, 39. 
Gibbon, Edward, 153. 
Goldsmith, Oliver, 83, 225. 
Grignan, Madame de, 138. 
Grimm, Friedrich Melchior (1723- 

1807), 287. 
Gulliver's Travels, 37. 
Guyon (ge-yoN')* Madame (1648- 

1717), 210. 

Hallam, Henry, 18, 34. 

Havet (late editor of Pascal's works) , 

128, 129. 
Hawkesworth, Dr., 222. 
Hazlitt, W. Carew, 48. 
Helvetius (el-va-se-uss / ), Claude 

Adrien (1715-1771), 287. 
Henriette, Princess, 170. 
Henry of Navarre, 63. 
Herod (King), 198. 
Herodotus, 7, 18. 
Holbach. See D'Holbach. 
Homer, 244. 

Hooker (" The judicious "), 205. 
Horace, 245. 
Hugo (ii'go'), Victor. See Victor 

Hugo. 
Hume, David, 48, 276. 

Isaiah (the prophet) , 94. 
Israel, 154. 

James (King), 210. 

Job, 94, 210. 

John (the Baptist) , 198. 

John (King), 21, 22. 

Johnes, Thomas, 19. 

Johnson, Samuel, 160, 249. 

Joinville (zhwftN-vel',), Jean de 

(1224P-1319?), 7. 
Julian (the Apostate) , 178. 



Kant, Emmanuel, 42. 
Knox, John, 198. 

La Boetie (la bo-a-te') , fitienne 

(1530-1563), 58, 59. 
LA BRUYERE (labru-e-yer 7 ), Jean 

(1646 ?-l 696), 12, 75-81, 153. 
LA FONTAINE (la foN-tan'), Jean 

de (1621-1695), 12, 81-92. 
Lamartine (la-mar-ten'), Alphonse 

Marie Louis de (1790-1869), 14, 

206, 289. 
Langue d'oc, 4. 
Langue d'oil, 4. 
Lanier, Sidney (1842-1881), 25. 
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (la rosh- 

foo-k6')> Francois, Due de (1613- 

1680), 12, 48, 66-75, 131, 147, 148. 
Longfellow, Henry W., 50. 
Louis IX. (1215-1270) (St. Louis), 

6, 7. 
Louis XI. (1423-1483), 7. 
Louis XIII. (1601-1643), 10, 95. 
Louis XIV. (1638-1715) (Quatorze), 

10, 12, 113, 135, 136, 169, 172, 176, 

181, 184, 189, 190, 198, 199, 200, 207, 

208, 213, 217-219, 223, 255. 
Louis XV. (1710-1774), 199, 214, 

254. 
Louvois (loo-vwa'), Marquis de, 

142. 
Lowell, James Russell, 291. 
Lucan, 151, 153, 240. 
Lucretius, 94, 166. 
Luther, Martin, 7, 40. 

Maintenon (m&N-teh-noisrO, Madame 
de (1635-1719), 172, 181, 210, 211. 

Malherbe (mal-erb'), Franyois (1555- 
1628), 9, 10, 14. 

Marti n(mar-taN) , Henri (1810- ), 
183. 

Mary, Queen of Scots, 8, 198. 



296 



Index. 



MASSILLON (mas-se-yoN'), Jean 
Baptiste (1663-1742), 3, 12, 148, 
182, 185, 188, 197-205. 

M'Crie, Thomas, 119. 

Michael (the Archangel), 205. 

Milton, John, 92, 182, 206, 247. 

MOLIERE (mo-leh-er'), real name, 
Jean Baptiste Poquelin (1622- 
1673), 12, 16, 83, 92-114, 127, 154, 
165, 167, 169, 240. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 151. 

MONTAIGNE (mon-tan'), Michel 
Eyquem de (1533-1592), 2, 7, 8, 
44-65, 67, 75, 131, 230, 234, 257, 268. 

Montespan (moN-tess-paN')> Ma- 
dame de (1641-1707), 138, 139, 140. 

MONTESQUIEU, de (moN-tes- 
ke-uhO, Charles de Secondat 
(1689-1755), 13, 218, 225-237. 

Morley, Henry, 249. 

Morley, John, 249, 251, 285. 

Motteux, " ter Anthony (1660- 
1718), 30. 

Musset (mii-sa') (1810-1857), Al- 
fred de, 289. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 13, 166. 
Nathan (the prophet) , 198. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 115. 
Nicole (ne-koK), Pierre (1625-1695), 
3, 143, 147, 168. 

" Obscurantism " (disposition, in 
the sphere of the intellect, to love 
darkness rather than light), 252. 

Pan-tag'-ru-el, 29, 40, 41, 42. 
Panurge (pa-niirzh'), 40, 41, 42. 
PASCAL, Blaise (1623-1662), 3, 12, 

48, 62, 65, 80, 115-133, 193. 
Pascal, Jacqueline, 116. 
Pelisson, 149. 
Petrarch, Francesco, 20. 



Phasdrus, 85. 

Plato, 50, 51, 59. 

Pleiades (ple'ya-dez), 8, 10, 13. 

Plutarch, 8, 48, 56. 

Po-co-cu'rant-ism, 248. 

Pompadour, Madame de, 254. 

Pompey, 56. 

Pope, Alexander, 48, 166. 

Poquelin (po-ke-laN r ). £eeMoliere, 

94, 95. 
Port Royal, 119, 127, 128, 147, 168. 
Pradon, 171. 

Provenqal (pro-voN-sal), 4. 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, 8. 

Quentin Durward, 7. 

RABELAIS (ra-bla'), Francois 

(1495P-1553?), 3, 7, 28-43, 60, 65, 

83, 146. 
RACINE (ra-seen'), Jean (1639- 

1699) , 12, 78, 79, 80, 83, 151, 152, 

153, 166-181, 205. 
Rambouillet (raN-bo5-yaO, Hotel 

de, 10, 11, 12, 100, 105, 155, 156, 183. 
Raphael (archangel), 205. 
Recamier (ra-ka-me-a 7 ), Madame 

(1777-1849), 11. 
Richard, the Lion-hearted, 117. 
Richelieu (resh-le-uh'), Cardinal, 

10, 12, 95, 154, 156. 
Roman (ro-maN'), 5. 
" Romanticism," 289, 290. 
" Romanticists," 14. 
Ronsard (roN-sar'), Pierre de (1524- 

1585), 8, 9. 
Ronsardism, 14. 
Rousseau (roo-so'), Jean Baptiste 

(1670-1741), 255. 
ROUSSEAU, Jean Jacques (1712- 

1778), 3, 13, 14, 48, 206, 218, 249, 

250, 251, 255-281, 287. 
Ruskin, John, 73. 



Index. 



297 



Rutebeuf (ru-te bnF ) (b. 1230), 
tr outer e, 6. 

Sabliere (sa-bli-er 7 ) , Madame de la, 

83, 84. 
Saci (sa-se 7 ), M. de, 65, 
Saintsbury, George, 17, 58. 
Saiiite-Beuve (sSNt-buV 7 ), Charles 

Augustin (1804-1869), 9, 14, 189, 

193, 199, 235, 289. 
SaVa-din (Saracen antagonist of 

Richard the Lion-hearted), 117. 
Salon (sa-loN')j U« 
Sand (soxd), George (Madame 

Dndevant, 1S04-1876), 3, 14. 
Saurin (so-rax 7 ), Jacques (1677- 

1730), 182. 
" Savoyard Curate's Confession," 

279. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 7, 19, 25, 105. 
Selden, John (" The learned ") , 205. 
Seneca, 43, 50. 
SEYIGXE (sa-ven-ya 7 ), Madame de, 

Marie de Rabutin-Chantal (1626- 

1696), 11, 105, 134-151, 170. 
Shakspeare, 16, 48, 63, 92, 94, 114, 

160, 240. 
Socrates (contrasted by Rousseau 

with Jesus), 280, 281. 
Sophocles, 153, 166, 168. 
Stael-Holstein (stii-eT ol-stax 7 ) , 

Anne Louise Germanie de (1766- 

1S17), 13,289. 
Stanislaus (King of Poland), 285. 
St. John, Bayle, 56, 58, 59. 
St. Pierre, Jacques Henri Bernardin 

de (1737-1814), 289. 
St. Simon, Louis de Rouvroi, Due 

de (1675-1755), 208, 209. 
Swift, Dean, 37. 
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 94. 

Tacitus, 7. 



Taine, H. (1828- ), 233. 

Tartuffe (tar-tuf), 106-114, 147. 

Tasso, 245, 247. 

Theleme (ta-lem 7 ), 38, 40. 

Themistocles, 289. 

Thibaud (te-\>o'), troubadour (1201- 

1253), 6. 
Trajan, 254. 
Troubadour, 4. 
Trouvere (troo-ver 7 ), 5, 6. 
Tully (Cicero), 246. 
Turgot (tiir-go 7 ), Anne Robert 

Jacques (1727-1781), 287. 

Urquhart, Sir Thomas, 30. 

i Van Laun, H., 17. 

Vatel, 143, 144, 145. 

Yauvenargues (vo-ve-narg^) , Luc 
de Clapiers, Marquis de (1715- 
1747), 79, 80, 81. 

Vercingetorix, 226 
, Victor Hugo (1802-1885), 14, 16, 94, 

2S9, 291. 
! Villehardouin (vel-ar-doo-ax 7 ), 

Geoff roy (U65P-1213?), 7. 
| Villemain (vel-max 7 ), Abel Fran- 
cois (1790-1870), 118. 

Virgil, 5, 9, 81, 166, 172, 245. 

Voiture (vwa-tiir 7 ), Vincent (1598- 
1648), 11. 

YOLTAIRE (vol-ter 7 ) , Francois 
Marie Arouet de (1694-1778), 2, 
13, 38, 48, 68, 80, 127, 152, 153, 160, 
161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 204, 218, 234, 
235, 238-255, 285, 286, 2S7. 

Wall, C. H., 106. 
Walpole, Horace, 151, 230. 
Warens (va-rax 7 ), Madame de, 264, 

265, 268, 269, 275. 
Webster, Daniel, 188. 
Wright, Elizur, 86. 



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